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COPYRIGHT. 1914 BY HARPER a BROTHERS 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY. 1914 



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CONTENTS 

Part I 

CHAP. PAGE 

Preface v 

I. Christianity and the Social Question 3 

II. The Law of Increase 14 

III. The Good Samaritan 25 

IV. Jesus' Judgment of Men 36 

V. Idealism and Devotion 47 

VI. Forty Years of Agnosticism 58 

Part II 

I. Christ's Love for Individuals 75 

II. The Forgiveness of Sin 85 

III. Forgiveness of Injuries 94 

IV. Gethsemane 103 

V. The Lord's Supper 113 

VI. The Mystery of Jesus' Death 121 

VII. The Resurrection of Jesus 137 

Part III 

I. The Power of Faith 165 

II. The Value of Life 175 

III. The Temple of God 186 

IV. Salvation by Work 199 

V. Justice and Mercy 212 

VI. The Healing of Naaman 222 

VII. The Illusions of Life 235 

VIII. The Three Judgment Seats 245 

IX. Christ at the Door of the Heart 255 



PREFACE 

I OFFER this book with mingled feelings of hesita- 
tion and of hope. Much of my own religious life 
and experience is contained within its covers, and for 
this reason I cannot help shrinking from revealing that 
which is personally dear and sacred. On the other 
hand, I hope that thoughts which have brightened my 
own life and which have sustained others when 
uttered may also be helpful when read. 

The unity of this volume lies in its subject-matter, 
Religion in its relation to Life. As both these words 
are words of unending richness and variety, the dis- 
cussion of them must bear the same characteristics. 
We cannot grasp religion in its totality any more than 
we can grasp life. In attempting to do so we succeed 
in laying hold only of a pale abstraction, the ghost of 
both. What we may aim at is depicting certain 
phases of the great drama of man's life in the presence 
of the Infinite which we have torn from reality and 
have invested with the spirit and breath of our own 
souls. As this book is frankly, avowedly, and positively 
Christian, I have established it as far as possible on 
texts of the Scriptures. Some of these studies deal 



PREFACE 

with the social aspects of religion, with the mighty 
spirit of aspiration and unrest which penetrates the 
world to-day, and with the difficult problems presented 
to Christianity by the tendencies of contemporary so- 
ciety. Some chapters are concerned with the problem 
of the personal life. Others discuss important phases 
of the life and teaching of Jesus, the meaning of his 
death and the reality of his resurrection. The method 
I have employed is the only one I know, the suppression 
of no truth and the ignoring of no felt difficulty, 
sincerity and simplicity of statement, and the unosten- 
tatious use of what knowledge I possess. I am keenly 
aware how little real originality this or any other 
serious and comprehensive statement of such themes 
can boast at the present day. Every one of these 
great thoughts has come down to us through countless 
other minds. All that we can hope to attain is the 
application of old truths to new conditions or new 
statements of the eternal problems. As this work is 
most simple in character and intended to be popular in 
its use, I have refrained from burdening its pages with 
references and quotations, and in preparing it I have 
intentionally avoided consulting the works of other 
men. Yet I am deeply sensible of how much I owe 
to such works, and I acknowledge in advance any 
obligations which may be detected by the well- 
read. 

There are two qualities of this work to which I may 
be permitted to call attention. Its estimates of 
Christianity and of the person and character of Jesus 



PREFACE 

are based on a lifelong study of the New Testament and 
upon a fair knowledge of the methods and results of 
modern criticism, while the parts bearing upon human 
life have been written in the light of an unusual oppor- 
tunity to study the lives and consciences of men and 
women. The result of this twofold training is a faith 
that rests on some knowledge and on much experience, 
and I ask the reader to believe that when I describe 
the effects of religious belief on human life I am not 
speaking of that which I do not know. There is no 
peace so deep as the peace of God and the normal 
effect of this costly possession is the heightening of all 
our physical and spiritual faculties, access to all that is 
deepest and most beautiful in human nature and an 
eager desire to extend to others the blessings we have 
received. As for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 
the better he is understood the more he will be loved 
and adored. We do not begin to realize how much we 
owe to him. The old rationalistic attempt to bring 
Jesus down to our level has crumbled by reason of its 
inherent weakness and because he ever escapes us and 
towers above us. For a long time no new "liberal" 
Life of Jesus will be written by men sufficiently in- 
structed to be able to undertake this arduous and 
fruitless task. While the spirit and the influence of 
Jesus were never more apparent in human life than 
they are to-day, his person has receded to his own 
century and to his solitary and unique place in human 
history. What remains for us is not to bring Christ 
up from the dead, but to consecrate ourselves to him 



PREFACE 

under whose banner every thinking man must ulti- 
mately march and to cause his ideals to be realized in 
this world. 

Elwood Worcester. 

Emmanuel Church, Boston. 
November, 1913. 



Part I 

SOCIAL ASPECTS OF RELIGION 



RELIGION AND LIFE 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION 

For the Son of man is come to seek and save that which was lost. 

— St. Luke xix: 10. 

WONDERFUL as Jesus' teaching was, the impres- 
sion he produced on the world was not by word 
alone. He found himself in a world of sin and misery 
which he ever drew closer and closer to himself, and in 
which he still dwells as its embodied conscience. No 
thought is oftener in our minds than whether Jesus 
would approve our conduct. No question is more 
earnestly asked than what would Jesus think of this or 
that fact of our modern life. 

He did not deny the reality of this world, nor pre- 
tend that it is the best possible world, nor did he say 
that man is a perfect being. But he offered us a re- 
ligion of redemption and of progress. To the intel- 
lectual needs of man he offered a religion so pure, so 
simple, so vital, so free from superstition and unreason 
that it has ever been the chief source of light and of 
progress to the nations that have accepted it. 

3 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

To man's moral weakness Jesus offered the example of 
a perfect life and a workable method of attaining that 
life. He perceived that the root of man's sin is selfish- 
ness and that to uproot selfishness from the human 
heart is to uproot sin. It is selfishness which leads me 
to sacrifice another's happiness to my own, and if I am 
a Christian I cannot find happiness in this way. It is 
selfishness w T hich leads me to seek and to demand the 
best for myself, leaving only the worthless refuse for 
others. It is selfishness which causes men to surround 
themselves with every form of luxury while they are 
obliged to lower their eyelids in the presence of the 
misery of their fellow-men. It is selfishness which in- 
duces us to use and exploit men as means to our ends, 
regardless of their good or of our country's good. 

The world has always regarded wealth and power, 
costly possessions, means of pleasure, objects of art as 
the most precious and interesting things it possesses. 
It will bow down to money, it will bow down to power, 
it will not bow down to love nor to sorrow. Jesus 
emphatically declared that men and women are far 
more precious and that in comparison with them 
things are nothing. 

It is difficult to see how two views of life so radically 
different can coexist. Two generations ago Abraham 
Lincoln foretold the downfall of human slavery or the 
downfall of this republic on the ground that a house so 
deeply divided against itself could not stand. To-day 
the same prediction may be made of modern society and 
the Christian religion. They cannot continue to co- 

4 



THE SOCIAL QUESTION 

exist and to enjoy free expression, because in so many 
respects one is the flagrant contradiction of the other. 

Christianity teaches the Fatherhood of God and the 
Brotherhood of Man. Its most sacred doctrine is the 
sacredness of human life. The object of its utmost 
solicitude is the downmost man. It is a religion for all, 
which affirms that one man's happiness is as dear and 
precious to God as another's, a religion of justice and of 
social obligations, a religion of ministering love and self- 
sacrifice. 

Modern society is built upon the accursed law: "To 
him that hath shall be given." It seeks the advantage — 
I will not say the happiness — of the few at the expense 
of the many. It regards men simply as instruments and 
agents and as means to an end — this end being self- 
aggrandizement. It regards self-seeking as the natural 
and legitimate end of life, and it calls the proud happy; 
and while doing all these things it professes to adore and 
to obey Jesus Christ. 

The contradiction is too glaring, and if we keep 
silent the very stones — by which I mean chiefly Bernard 
Shaw — will cry out. Yet we have many excuses. The 
true character of Jesus and the nature of his religion, 
once well known to the Church and for more than four 
hundred years gloriously displayed to the world, have 
long been obscured. But to-day the purposes of Jesus 
are as well understood as they ever will be until they 
are put into practice. For more than a century the 
greatest scholars and many of the greatest minds of the 
world have been at work on this theme, and now the 

5 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

results of their patient labors are about to make them- 
selves felt in the world. Much as still remains to be 
done in the Life of the Lord, we have reached a point 
at which it is impossible to make the Christian Religion 
mean what we wish it to mean. In other words, we 
cannot falsify and alter the teachings of Jesus any 
longer to suit our own purposes. 

The modern world, having discovered what Chris- 
tianity in its main outlines really is, may reject it as 
its most deadly foe, but it will not go on innocently 
singing revolutionary little chants like the Magnificat, 
which celebrate its own downfall, without perception 
of their meaning. It may ban Christianity and try to 
uproot it from the earth, but it is not base enough to 
continue to profess it while trampling its most sacred 
injunctions under foot. 

And yet I do not believe that this is what will 
really happen. The world is not so ready to part with 
Jesus Christ and to lose his companionship as it ap- 
pears to be, for it has no one to take his place. It 
perceives that the nations which have been inspired 
by him have been the best inspired and it knows 
that the most virile, conquering, and enduring fact 
in our civilization is Christianity. Other societies 
with keener insight than ours have tried to put an end 
to the influence of Jesus and to destroy his cause by 
fire and sword when it was defended by only a few 
poor and obscure Christians, but it proved too great a 
task for the whole might of the Roman Empire. Other 
nations in the past have trod the path we are beginning 

6 



THE SOCIAL QUESTION 

to tread. Why is it that they have failed and fallen 
either by bloody revolution or by their own inward 
weakness and decay? Whether we look at the rich or 
at the poor, so far as they are uninfluenced by Jesus 
Christ, we do not see much that is alluring and inspiring 
or that contains much hope for the future. 

Nor does it require much perspicacity to see that the 
same tendencies in modern life which are inimical to 
Christianity are also dangerous to our country as a 
whole. The institution of American Democracy is 
threatened by the same aggressions. We are so 
accustomed to the scandals of our public life and to the 
crimes against America which are daily recorded in our 
papers that we forget with how ominous a sound these 
revelations fall on the ears of the rest of the world. 
American Democracy as the expression of the political 
and social institutions of a free and united people is 
perhaps the simplest, the most logical and the least 
burdensome form of government yet devised by man. 
But as an oligarchy, a plutocracy, the form of our 
government is an absurdity; it is the weakest form 
because most exposed to corruption. 

Rome flourished and grew to greatness as a republic. 
Having lost her liberties in reality, it did not take her 
long to lose them also in name; and, stupendous as the 
Roman Empire became, it lived in the consciousness of 
its end. What killed Rome was the extinction of an 
independent middle class of virtuous and patriotic 
citizens, leaving her only the very rich and the very 
poor. For several centuries the rich did something to 

7 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

make atonement to the poor. They had their form of 
social service which consisted in the free distribution 
of bread and the games of the circus, but during these 
years Rome lost all her vitality, and she sank beneath 
a^warm^f^barbariaiis, which Julius^Csesarjvpuld have 
^thered mfajihovm. 

We are moving in the same direction to-day. The 
churches and social service are doing their best to heal 
the wounds that our industrial and social system is 
inflicting. Baseball and football have taken the place 
of the old Roman games and amuse many. Yet what 
reason have we to suppose that the end will be different? 
American Democracy has as much to fear from the 
aggressions of capitalism as has Christianity. But of 
the two Christianity has much the better means of 
defense. Christianity is far more necessary to De- 
mocracy than Democracy is to Christianity. Chris- 
tianity can bide its time. If it is not successful at 
first, it will be successful at last. For this is the 
peculiarity of evil. The higher it rises, the wider it 
spreads, the deeper it strikes its roots, the more certain 
and imminent is its downfall. It is only necessary to 
allow selfishness and rapacity free play for them to 
compass their own ruin. When the danger becomes 
pressing, relief comes. 

What is retarding the progress and the success of 
Christianity to-day is that its real principles and its 
incredible demands are so little understood and are so 
feared by those who profess it. They involve such a 
radical change of our whole view of life and manner of 

8 



THE SOCIAL QUESTION 

living that we who have reached middle age stand 
aghast and are as mute as fishes at the prospect. It 
was not for nothing that Jesus said, "Change your 
minds, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Our 
children who are growing up under changed and chang- 
ing conditions and who hear social questions constantly 
discussed by honored teachers in schools and colleges 
and universities feel very differently in regard to them. 
We often regret that they have not more religion, but 
perhaps they will look back and blush to think we had 
not more. 

For this reason I have the utmost sympathy for men 
of power who feel that things are not as they should be, 
yet know not how to rectify them, for I know by long 
experience how good and honorable and true in heart 
such men frequently are. Many of them have faith- 
fully practised the religion they learned as children, 
when these matters were never mentioned, and, while 
really believing that religion has nothing to do either 
with business or with politics, they have been through 
life just and humane. Many of them have tacitly 
repudiated the methods by which they gained their for- 
tunes by giving them away. Even if such men desire 
to practise the religion which they feel now to be true, 
or more true, they believe it to be impossible for them 
to do so. They have duties and responsibilities to 
their stockholders and to those who have confided 
savings to their care. If they were to attempt to dis- 
regard the great law of supply and demand which 
regulates the price of labor, to shorten hours, to ab- 

9 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

stain from child labor and from overburdening women; 
if they were to pension old age, and to employ all those 
means of safeguarding the life and the health of their 
workers which humanity dictates, they would fail and 
have to retire from business, while others, less scrupu- 
lous, would succeed. 

Why, then, should we concern ourselves with such 
matters at all? Simply because we cannot help it, 
because the price we are paying for our success in the 
embittering and degradation of human life is too great. 
A generation ago, under conditions which probably 
were just as bad, the great problem of human happiness 
was scarcely mentioned. To-day it is upon every tongue. 
In another generation those of us who are alive will be 
cheerfully at work at it. 

Do not imagine in all this that Christianity comes 
forward as the enemy of any one or of any part of 
society. Christianity is the friend of all. In calling 
us away from our narrow, restricted lives to the service 
of the common good Christ is offering us the only life 
that is worthy of his disciples. Many have already 
enlisted themselves under his banner and bear his easy 
yoke, and they know that in the service of others they 
have found a life so sweet, so purifying, so absorbingly 
interesting that they would not exchange it for any- 
thing this world can offer them; and the more personal 
and vital our ministry, the greater the reward. 

But if, instead of a few, all the good were enlisted 

in this cause; if instead of merely striving to repair the 

waste and ravages our industrial system is inflicting 

10 



THE SOCIAL QUESTION 

and drying up some pools in this ocean of tears the 
source of sorrow could be closed and the gates of 
happiness opened, and life and labor should become a 
blessing instead of a curse; if instead of class division 
and mutual suspicion we were all united in a common 
faith and a common purpose; if instead of feeling our 
religion to be a reproach to us we could feel its joy, 
experience its blessing, and prove its truth by its results, 
how infinitely our lives would be enlarged! 

It is a matter of shame and of general amazement 
that to-day Christianity is doing so little to make its 
ideals realized in the world. Why is it, with the 
enormous prestige, learning, wealth, and devotion of 
the churches and their members, that such conditions 
should exist as are described in Charles Booth's East 
London, or such as are visible in this city and in every 
great center of industry and civilization? Can a 
greater affront to the love of Jesus Christ be imagined? 
The fault does not lie in him. It is not that the ideals 
and purposes of Jesus Christ have been found mistaken 
or futile. It is because the churches and their members 
are not free to carry those ideas out. Jesus, though 
poor, came into this world to make many rich. Our 
present system, while making a few rich, has the effect 
of making many poor. 

Christianity has proved itself wonderfully flexible 
and adaptive. It has flourished under every form of 
government, and often it has flourished best when out- 
lawed by all government; but to realize its ideals when 
they conflict with human interests it must be free. In 

11 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

former days when the Church throve in the face of 
persecution and compelled the reformation of the 
society which would destroy it Christians stood outside 
of that society and gave their whole allegiance to Jesus 
Christ. The difficulty to day is that we are all mem- 
bers of the society which is doing the evil, and directly 
and indirectly we are dependent on it and equally 
responsible for it. Churches and members of churches, 
bishops, priests, and deacons, all are caught in the same 
snare. 

Therefore the voices which are raised in pity and in 
rebuke come for the most part from outside the 
churches. But it is obvious that if the greatest move- 
ment of modern times, a movement to realize one of the 
most sacred purposes of Jesus Christ, should take place 
without the help of the Church and in a spirit of 
hostility to it, it would stultify Christianity, alienate 
the people from it, and do an injury to the cause of 
Christ from which it could hardly recover. Charity, 
of course, is out of the question unless we wish to tread 
with open eyes the path on which the Roman Empire 
went. What we need is a reconstruction of our whole 
social system and of our ideals of the purpose of life, 
a program that will give to every man an opportunity 
to work out his own salvation. 

Let me add one word in vindication of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. A great many educated persons to-day 
criticize and belittle Jesus because he appeared to 
asquiesce in an order of things which he knew to be 
unjust and intolerable, and because he preached, as 

12 



THE SOCIAL QUESTION 

they say, resignation in the face of existing evils. 
Such a criticism rests on a misapprehension of Christ's 
real thought and purpose. Jesus was so deeply im- 
patient of the wrongs and injustices of the world that 
he deliberately proposed to end them by ending the 
world itself, and with this intention he voluntarily laid 
down his life on the cross, expecting thereby to usher 
in the kindgom of God in which God's will should be 
done on earth as it is in heaven. It was the will of 
God that an even more stupendous task should de- 
volve on him through his death — that of saving this 
existing world, of overcoming evil by good, not by 
power, of regenerating men and nations by moral 
means. And he is equal to this task if those who call 
themselves his servants and through whom he naturally 
works will help him and not thwart him. In his life he 
showed his disposition toward human sorrow by sur- 
rounding himself by its victims and by giving them 
peace and life. He has converted the most abhorred 
object in the world, his own cross, into the holiest ob- 
ject. Him we may deny, but his achievement never; 
and if the world has to choose between Jesus Christ 
and those things which it cannot and dare not bring 
into his presence I do not believe that its choice will be 
doubtful. 



II 

THE LAW OF INCREASE 

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: 
but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. 

— St. Matthew xxv: 29. 

THIS saying is the result of one of our Saviour's 
deep glances into Nature. It describes not so 
much what Jesus desired to see in the Kingdom of God 
as what years of experience in this world had taught 
him. I think I am safe in saying it contains at least 
the germ of the theory of Darwin. Christ had just 
related a parable in which he had shown how easy it 
is for a man who has received five talents to double his 
capital by judicious trading, and how hard it is for the 
man who has received only one talent to do much with 
it. When the King returns, the man with the ten 
talents is further rewarded by being made ruler over 
ten cities, while the poor fellow who had wrapped his 
one talent up in a napkin and had hidden it away in the 
ground for safe-keeping is obliged to relinquish his sole 
possession; and he has the further mortification of 
seeing it given to a man who has already more than 
he needs. The rich becomes richer and the poor 
becomes poorer. 

14 



THE LAW OF INCREASE 

I presume that most of us do not have to live very 
long before we realize that this is the way of the world, 
and that this is a very true parable of Nature. It has 
an inspiring side, and it has a depressing and terrible 
side. It is a comfortable thought to the man who has 
five talents, but it is apt to be a very sad thought to 
the man who has only one talent. A little considera- 
tion will show how true this is. A man who has always 
enjoyed good health does not need to be anxious or con- 
stantly on his guard for fear he shall fall ill. When 
he is bidden to a feast he does not ask himself, "I 
wonder whether it will agree with me?" he goes. He 
does not fear a sleepless night every time he is obliged 
to overwork a little. An epidemic visits his town; he 
is exposed and he is spared. His iron constitution is 
proof against disease; "A thousand may fall beside 
him and ten thousand at his right hand, but it does 
not come nigh him." But let a man once really lose his 
health and it is a most difficult matter to recover it. 
His enfeebled condition exposes him to every passing 
ailment. The mind acts on the body and the body 
reacts on the mind. Mental ills produce physical, 
and physical weakness causes mental depression and 
sadness. 

So, again, if a man has a little money there are a 
hundred ways in which he can invest it and make 
more. But if a man has no money to begin with it is 
extremely difficult for him to make any. When one 
hears of colossal fortunes heaped up by men who 
began life with nothing one is most interested to learn 

15 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

how they got the first thousand dollars together, for 
the history of the first thousand contains the secret of 
the man's whole subsequent success. 

The same thing is true of the intellectual life. If 
a man knows much it is always easy for him to learn 
more. Everything contributes to that man's culture. 
His memory becomes like adamant, from which char- 
acters once engraved are never obliterated. His powers 
of observation are so penetrating that in the very stone 
which the ignorant man spurns with his foot he can 
read the history of the world. His brain becomes such 
a perfect instrument that it works for him while he is 
asleep. But, on the other hand, if a man knows 
nothing it is almost impossible to teach him anything 
and it is equally difficult to make him wish to learn 
anything. 

So we might trace the operation of this great law 
in a hundred fields. Who is invited to banquets and 
fine entertainments: the poor man, to whom such an 
invitation would be quite an event in his life, or the 
rich man, who is merely bored by it? To whom are 
all doors open, without money and without price: to 
the poor man, who otherwise has to remain at home, 
or to the rich man, who is very well able to pay his own 
way? If we are thinking of bestowing a gift, to whom 
do we naturally turn: to some poor distressed man 
or woman whose necessities it would relieve, or to some 
one to whom the gift is nothing except a mark of our 
esteem? It is one of the minor basenesses of human 
nature that a young man who hesitates at no personal 

16 



THE LAW OF INCREASE 

luxury will quarrel with his washwoman, who depends 
on him for her living, and carefully examine her ac- 
counts lest she should deprive him of a quarter of a 
dollar. Prosperous men have many friends — at all 
events, it is their own fault if they have not; poor men 
have few. Rich men very often have a large circle 
of family connections who are also rich and who die 
and leave them their property. The poor man's 
relative dies and leaves him only the duty of paying 
for the funeral. Rich men are consulted on every 
subject, and their advice is followed even in matters of 
which they know nothing; while, as Juvenal sadly says, 
"Poverty has no more bitter sting than that it makes a 
man ridiculous." 

Now all these facts make it difficult for a man who is 
handicapped by ignorance or poverty or ill health to 
succeed and lead a happy life; unquestionably they 
bear hard upon him. To overcome and make one's 
way in spite of them requires manliness, strength of 
character and courage of the highest order. "To suc- 
ceed nowadays," says Balzac, "one must be either a 
miasma or a cannon-ball." So many of us, not caring 
to be a miasma, but not feeling within our breasts the 
solid energy of a cannon-ball, either repine and despair 
or rail against God and Providence for having placed 
us in such a world. It is hardly necessary to call 
attention to the wide-spread, rapidly growing discon- 
tent of the less-favored classes, revealed by an unusual 
and appalling number of suicides, by the organization 
of capital and labor, whose incessant clashes have 

2 17 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

assumed the proportions of a social war by elaborate 
socialistic schemes to evade the hardships of existence, 
or by the more radical method of the anarchist who hurls 
his death-dealing bomb against our whole social fabric. 
At bottom, their quarrel with the world is only with that 
law of Nature we have been considering — namely, 
"To him that hath shall be given," not to him that 
hath need; or, to state the case more broadly but still 
with perfect fairness, that every one, on the whole, is 
rewarded in this world according to his social and 
economic effectiveness, not according to his neces- 
sities. It is owing to this law, they say, that life is 
always a struggle, frequently a disease. Abolish this 
condition by a more equal distribution of the good 
things of this world; give to every man at least the 
opportunity to work out his own salvation, to develop 
the gift that is in him, and to enjoy the fruit of his 
labor. Let the rich be satisfied with fortunes they 
can use and with amusements that really amuse them, 
and humanity will come to its own again and be as 
happy and innocent and contented as in the first 
blessed days of Paradise. There is the great dilemma 
with which the Christian religion is confronted to-day: 
on the one hand the dream and vision of Jesus, of the 
Brotherhood of Man, of a God of Love who desires the 
happiness and blessedness of all his children; on the 
other, the growing misery of mankind, the iron law of 
labor, the sacrifice of the weak which seems to inhere 
in Nature. 

I know very well what the man of science, especially 

18 



THE LAW OF INCREASE 

the evolutionist, will say to this and to every similar 
attempt to increase the happiness of this world. He 
will point out that the law which I have been exploiting 
is by no means peculiar to human society, but that it 
applies with equal rigor to everything that has life. 
In every field he shows the tares stubbornly disputing 
the ground with the good wheat. "Suppose you 
clergymen," he says, "should leave off considering the 
lilies of the field that you have considered for nearly 
two thousand years and consider instead the sharp 
claws of the tiger or the powerful tail of the alligator, 
that are certainly formed on very egotistical principles, 
and ask yourselves the purpose of these ingenious 
structures." Who has not considered them? We know 
that he who can strike most sharply and most swiftly 
will probably get the most prey and leave the largest 
number of children to inherit his amiable disposition. 
But what of that? Man has neither the claws of a 
tiger nor the tail of an alligator. He would be positively 
embarrassed by such embellishments. Even among 
those fierce creatures we see the glimmering of a better 
law that is not the law of battle, but the law of love. 
All children the world over, the child of the tiger as 
well as the child of man, are treated not according to 
their deserts but according to their necessities. More- 
over, the evolutionist has fixed his eye exclusively on 
the most savage and ferocious groups of animals, from 
which he draws his sweet parables in regard to human 
life. But apart from the fierce carnivores there is a 
larger and better group of peaceful herbivorous animals 

19 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

which have depended not on their individual ferocity 
and their terrible weapons but on their mildness and 
gentleness of disposition which has rendered social 
life and mutual support possible, and it is this group 
which has flourished best and which alone will survive 
long after the fierce lions and tigers and crocodiles 
shall have disappeared. Nor could there be a grosser 
or more stupid mistake than to suppose that man 
was brought into this world tamely and miserably to 
follow the laws of Nature. Rather, he was put here to 
study those laws and to improve upon them, or, better, 
to substitute for them moral laws. There is not an 
evil that men do, not an act of infamy of which the 
vilest wretch is guilty, that did not spring from some 
natural desire of his corrupt heart. And, on the other 
hand, every upward step man has taken has consisted 
in his overcoming some law of Nature that up to that 
time had overcome him. Our Christian civilization, 
so far as it is Christian, is based on a flagrant dis- 
obedience of this most fundamental law of Nature. 
Nature says only the best and strongest shall live. 
Christianity says all shall live. Not the most miserable 
child of man shall perish so long as he can be kept 
alive by the whole wealth of our science and tenderness. 
What ought the attitude of Christians to be toward 
this great problem of human happiness, which is the 
great question of our day? I have no nostrum, no 
panacea, to offer, and but little faith in those which have 
been proposed. Yet the problem of increasing the 

happiness of the world and of diminishing its misery 

20 



THE LAW OF INCREASE 

is the burden that rests most heavily on all good and 
tender hearts. Shall we simply close our eyes to the 
misery of our fellow-men, close our ears to the solemn 
cry of humanity, and while wrapping ourselves in all the 
privileges of our order and in all manner of personal 
indulgence preach resignation and humble submission 
to the miserable? It is too late for that. That hyp- 
ocritical doctrine is no longer tolerable. If we have 
no better message than that we may at least keep 
silence. Shall we go on artificializing and refining our 
churches and our services until in them there is no 
place either for the humble or for the miserable? 
Shall we go on emasculating our preaching either by 
fearing to grapple with the great questions of our day — 
the live devils, as Carlyle called them — or by treating 
them with the ignorance of children until our very 
office becomes the laughing-stock of serious men? 
Our Church has no such intention. Let us not forget 
that those religions which have conquered for them- 
selves a following and have deeply touched the con- 
sciences of men have done so by attacking social evils 
rather than theological problems. That assuredly was 
the case with Buddhism. It was not by his atheism or 
his Nihilistic philosophy, but by his abolition of caste 
and his equal law of love for all that Sakya Muni drew 
after him first India, then the greater part of Asia. 
The proof that Jesus gave of the reality of his Messiah- 
ship was that the Gospel for the first time was preached 
to the poor. It was his glorious conception of the 
Kingdom of God, in which all good souls were united, 

21 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

that conquered the Western World for Christianity. 
Throughout the Middle Ages society was monarchical 
and aristocratic, but the Church was democratic. 
The little Church in Jerusalem, in which they that 
believed had all things in common, was the first practical 
attempt to abolish the infinite injustice of this world. 
What if it held together only for a few years? During 
those years men were happy. Moreover, they set up 
an ideal that we have been pursuing through the ages. 
The churches founded by St. Paul in Corinth, Ephesus, 
and Antioch gave men what the great Roman Empire, 
with all its magnificence, all its justice, had never given 
them — a reason for living. Ambrose, the great Bishop 
of Milan, used to despoil the churches of his diocese 
and even to sell the sacred vessels of the altar to redeem 
slaves out of slavery, saying, "My God has no need of 
cups and platters, but He does desire men to be free and 
happy." Alas, how long have we esteemed silver and 
gold in any form to be more precious than the souls 
and bodies of men ! But there is reason to believe that 
we are returning to better things. The problem of the 
nineteenth century was to secure to all men equal 
political rights. That problem has been solved so far as 
the English-speaking peoples are concerned. Just as 
certainly the problem of the twentieth century is to 
secure equal social and human rights. The religion of 
the future is coming. God forbid that it should come 
without us ! The world is returning to the great moral 
conceptions of Jesus and the Prophets — the coming of 
the day of the just, the opening of blind eyes, bringing 

22 



THE LAW OF INCREASE 

prisoners out of their prison-houses. Again it shall be 
said, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom 
of God." The meek at last shall receive their inher- 
itance. The old refrain, "Behold how good and joyful 
a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity," has 
long ceased to be our chant. 

But when our modern individualism and rapacity 
shall have borne their latest fruit, when humanity, 
shrunken, saddened, and despoiled, shall return to the 
great ideals of human brotherhood and human service, 
when the happiness of the many shall no longer be 
sacrificed to the vanity and the ambition of a few, then 
the great fundamental principles of the Christian 
Religion will regain their value. We shall know why 
it was that for a man to die in the possession of great 
and abnormal wealth should have been regarded as a 
mark of his inferiority. We can understand why Dives 
lost his soul. We can comprehend how the great 
orders of the Middle Ages should have spent centuries 
in discussing whether Jesus so much as owned the 
clothes he wore. We shall know why he devoted a large 
portion of his life simply to doing kind acts to the un- 
fortunate. We shall see why it was necessary that the 
Son of God should not have where to lay his head. 
The splendid ideal traced by the author of the Acts of 
the Apostles will be inscribed as a prophetic dream and 
vision over the gates of the Paradise of humanity: 
"And the multitude of them that believed were together 
and had all things common . . . and they continuing 
daily with one accord in the Temple and breaking bread 

23 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

from house to house did eat their meat with gladness 
and singleness of mind, praising God and having favor 
with all the people." * 
As one also of your own poets has said: 

With gates of silver and bars of gold 

Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold. 

I have heard the dropping of their tears 

In heaven these eighteen hundred years. 

O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, 
We build but as our fathers built. 
Behold thine images how they stand 
Sovereign and sole through all our land. 

Then Christ sought out an artisan, 
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, 
And a motherless girl whose fingers thin 
Pushed from her faintly want and sin. 

These set He in the midst of them, 
And as they drew back their garments' hem 
For fear of defilement — 'Lo, here,' said He, 
"The images ye have made of Me." 

1 These paragraphs contain a recollection of a great passage of Renan, 
which I have preferred not to verify. 



Ill 

THE GOOD SAMARITAN 

But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus: and who is my neighbor? 

—St. Luke x: 29. 

IN answer to this question Jesus related the parable 
of the Good Samaritan. 
All great masters have their masterpieces. The 
works of even the greatest artists are not all equal. 
There are certain canvases of Raphael's, like the Sis- 
tine Madonna and the Transfiguration, so glorious 
as to obscure his other creations. They may not be 
better painted but they have a greater appeal and a 
more immediate meaning. So among the sayings of 
Jesus are two perfect parables which tower like twin 
pinnacles above his superb edifice. They are the 
parable of the Prodigal Son and the parable of the 
Good Samaritan. The Prodigal Son describes the 
breaking and the renewal of man's relation to God; 
the Good Samaritan, man's love to his brother. To- 
gether they contain the Christian religion. If the Good 
Samaritan were composed, as it would appear, on the 
spur of the moment in answer to an unexpected ques- 
tion, it stuns us to think of the resources of the being 
that uttered it. 

25 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

A certain lawyer had come to Jesus with a great 
question, ability to answer which would forever de- 
termine the Lord's status as a spiritual teacher: 
"Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 
Jesus' treatment of this man is very interesting. He 
does not offer him some little ready-made scheme of 
salvation. He does not put off his question with a 
few phrases as to the beauty and power of religion. 
He causes the man to search his own conscience, and 
to answer, as far as he can, his own question. "What 
is written in the Law? How readest thou?" The 
lawyer's answer shows him to have been a great man. 
It is a better answer than Hillel made to the man 
who insisted that the teacher should explain the whole 
Law to him while he stood on one leg. Hillel said, 
"What thou wouldest not that another should do to 
you, do not to him. That is the whole Law, the rest is 
only comment." When the same request was made to 
Shammai, Shammai beat the man who asked it with 
a stick. Hillel's answer omits all allusion to God and 
is purely negative, and the reply of our lawyer is 
vastly better: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor 
as thyself." 

His answer is so good that it is hard to see how it 
can be bettered, or why a man who held so noble and 
complete a view of religion should come to Jesus to 
inquire the way of salvation. But while Jesus gladly 
accepted the definition, he did not dismiss the lawyer 

26 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN 

as if he had nothing to bestow on him, for there was a 
most important gift that Jesus intended to give the 
man who had just given him a noble and refreshing 
thought. That was to translate his conception from 
the abstract into the concrete and to put it into action. 
In religion, as in art, it is the deed, not the word, that 
counts. The holiest and the truest words cannot 
become a way of salvation until they are translated 
into action. The very Word of God is inoperative 
until it takes flesh. 

In answering this question "And who is my neigh- 
bor?" Jesus did not trouble himself with the idle query 
whether it is possible to love another as we love our- 
selves, but he laid his finger on one of the noblest 
traits of human nature which he intended to use as a 
mainspring of his religion. In the Prodigal Son and in 
many another saying Jesus declared that man's needs 
and sufferings establish a claim on the love of God 
entirely irrespective of his deserts and merits. Here 
he shows how human needs awaken the divine in man 
by touching his sympathies, and that this great ques- 
tion of the fulfilment of the Law and the attainment of 
everlasting life has either an immense immediate and 
practical meaning or it has no meaning. 

I suppose and I fear that Jesus aimed a frightful 
sarcasm at the clergy and the sacerdotal order when he 
represented the priest and the Levite as calmly going 
by on the other side, leaving the wounded man bleeding 
on the ground. But this is perfectly evident: no 
task and no business in life is important enough or 

27 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

exacting enough to excuse us from the duty of suc- 
coring men and women in distress or from performing 
those elementary duties of kindness and compassion 
which are presented to us every day. This is the great 
commandment of the Law, and it is so great that, if 
broken, the keeping of the other commandments is of 
no account. It was not an accident that Jesus selected 
this disposition as the criterion by which he would 
recognize his own and as the great principle of judgment 
which would enable him to separate his sheep from the 
goats. 

No doubt the priest and the Levite had duties to 
perform, and probably they were religious duties. 
Very likely the priest was going down to Jericho to 
preach to the inhabitants of that wicked city on the 
error of their ways and the Levite was going with him 
to read the lesson. We instinctively feel that the 
passing by of the wounded man rendered that service 
of no account, and we cannot help wondering what the 
priest preached about that morning — probably a 
sermon on the discipline and rites of the Church, or on 
the frame of mind one should be in on the Seventeenth 
Sunday after Trinity. There is a very mischievous 
little beast called the praying mantis. He looks very 
devout, a very paragon of insects for piety. His 
arms are ever folded, and his head bowed as if in 
prayer; but let another insect trust these appear- 
ances to approach him, and he becomes a specter to 
affright, and his revenge is like the tiger's spring. 
There are many praying mantises in the world. Some 

28 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN 

assume that posture to leap upon their prey. Others 
are so sunk in their reverie that they perceive uot when 
men are perishing. 

Next let us observe how thoroughly the Good 
Samaritan did his work. He undertook only one case, 
but he carried it through to the end. The wounded 
man was no professional beggar like those whose hands 
are outstretched on every street and who can never be 
restored to manhood by alms but only by re-education. 
He was not one of those scheming marauders who 
gently pull our bells after dark and who pour into our 
astonished ears tales equal in invention to Baron 
Munchausen's. He was a man like ourselves who had 
met with sudden misfortune and who needed both 
surgical treatment and social service. This the Good 
Samaritan saw at a glance, and he trusted the instinct 
of his own noble heart. He did not stop to inquire 
whether religion is for the sick or only for the well. 
He did not call in a scientific society to make an 
investigation of his patient's past history while the 
man was bleeding to death. He cleansed and bound 
up his wounds, employing the best antiseptics at his 
command. He placed the wounded man on his own 
beast and carried him to the inn, and when he had put 
his patient to bed he paid for his maintenance. Nor 
did he allow the case to lapse through inattention and 
neglect, but he bound himself to care for the man 
until his health was restored. There was only one 
thing he omitted — the pursuit and arrest of the mis- 
creants who had perpetrated the outrage, that others 

29 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

might not suffer at their hands, which is always a very 
difficult task. But in every other respect he stands as a 
model to every man or association of men that would 
serve humanity to-day. 

There is no doubt that Jesus regarded such a dis- 
position as this as of the very essence of religion, and 
that without it the other half of the Law, which is duty 
to God, becomes impossible. God is in no need of our 
services. There is no service we can render to Him 
but the service of a willing mind, and no gift that we 
can bestow upon the Most High except the offering of a 
contrite heart and the relief of His needy creatures. 

Perhaps there never was a time when men needed 
to heed this parable of Christ's more than now. We 
seem to think that great evils can be remedied merely 
by talking about them. We form societies and hold 
meetings and pass resolutions and offer petitions and 
take measures. There is everlasting talk about 
reform which no one seems willing to begin with him- 
self. The voices die away, the crowds are dispersed, 
the words are forgotten, and everything remains 
exactly as it was before. And we imagine that this can 
take the place of deeds, and we even fancy that because 
we are interested in these things and are busy about 
them we have no time to do good. 

Jesus, however, it would seem, placed little reliance 
on all this. When he sent out his Disciples he did not 
say: "Talk, agitate questions, hold meetings/' but, 
"Heal the sick, cast out devils, Freely ye have re- 

30 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN 

ceived, freely give." He spent a large part of his life 
in the quiet performance of kind acts, and he assumed 
that a large part of his Disciples' lives would be spent 
in doing good in secret. Some words are good, but in 
this sphere the only words that are heeded much are 
the words of a man of action. The last judgment 
passed on us here and hereafter is on our goodness of 
heart. 

We like to think of Henry Ward Beecher sitting in his 
great church at night after the services of the day are 
over, with his arms around two little street Arabs who 
had wandered in to listen to the music and who had 
fallen asleep. We like to think of Abraham Lincoln 
laying aside his crushing cares to write a letter of 
sympathy to a bereaved mother in words of such 
exquisite beauty that the University of Oxford could 
find no more perfect specimen of language to en- 
grave in letters of gold upon its portal for the in- 
struction of successive generations of English scholars. 
It gives us more pleasure to remember Phillips 
Brooks in the homes of the poor, tending the baby 
while its tired mother takes a walk, than to think of 
him preaching in Westminster Abbey. One harsh or 
graceless act on the part of such men would mar the 
ideal image of them we carry in our hearts. 

The problem presented to us by the need and suffer- 
ing and distress of a great city, I admit, is very difficult. 
It is a hundred times as difficult as it was in Judea in 
the days of Jesus. If our fallen brothers would only 
act as reasonably as the man in the parable, if they 

31 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

would go with us to the inn and get well and go back 
to an honest and a peaceable life, it would give us 
nothing but pleasure to help them. But that is just 
what the majority of them will not do. We relieve their 
necessities, we dress their wounds, we cheerfully pay the 
twopence for their support, but the next time we go 
their way there they are as hungry and naked and 
wounded as ever, and fortunate are we if they do not 
reverse the role and rob us and leavejis half dead at 
their ingratitude. 

I often think of the strange persons who have come 
to me in the course of my ministry, of the criminals I 
have failed to reform, of the weird and terrible tales I 
have listened to, and I wonder sometimes if, until ten 
years ago when I found a better method, I did any 
perceptible good. Twice I have tried Victor Hugo's 
experiment of taking friendless strangers into my home. 
One of those persons went to jail; the other richly 
deserved to go there. But I am convinced that when 
I have failed to change and improve such persons I 
failed, not because I gave them too much, but because 
I had too little to give them. The mortal challenge 
of their depravity was beyond my strength. Their 
incredulity and unbelief were greater than my faith. 
What I regret is not that I gave such men so much, but 
that I did not give them more. If I have done little 
for them, they have done much for me, and I am 
devoutly thankful that the great confraternity of the 
miserable still regards the Church as its only natural 
friend. 

32 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN 

It is true, each one of us can do but little and the 
need is endless. Our means seem as inadequate as 
those of the Disciples when after anxious search they 
came to Jesus and said, "There is a lad here that hath 
five barley loaves and a few small fishes, but what 
are they among so many?" And yet, however the 
miracle was wrought, with that scanty supply Jesus 
satisfied all. Preposterous as it sounds to unbelief, this 
same Jesus, this man that had not where to lay his 
head, is the chief hope of the hungry, thirsty, sinning, 
suffering multitudes that throng us to-day. If his 
followers would act in his spirit, if our society were 
organized to realize his ideals, if those whom life has 
robbed and wounded could be brought to him, the 
worst evils that deform human nature and that de- 
stroy human life would disappear. 

We are accustomed to ascribe the wonderful progress 
of the past century chiefly to reason. But the progress 
we have most reason to be proud of — the emancipation 
of the slave, sensitiveness to pain, cruelty, and injustice, 
love of humanity — has been effected by the spirit of 
Jesus Christ, not by reason. It was not reason that 
plunged this country into civil war fifty years ago, and 
that induced us to make the greatest sacrifice man has 
ever made for men. Reason, speaking by the mouth 
of Aristotle, had laid down as an axiom that the 
inferior races are designed by Nature to be the slaves 
of the superior races. The emancipation of the slave 
was effected when slavery was clearly seen to be 
against the will and the religion of Jesus Christ; and 

3 33 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

when the next great emancipation of men from want 
and ignorance and crime shall take place it will take 
place by the same means. Sociologists may prescribe, 
anarchists may plot, socialists may scheme, but power 
to lift the world to new courses comes from religion. 

I know that there are still many persons who call 
themselves Christians who prize the good things of life 
— wealth, position, education, culture — chiefly because 
other persons cannot enjoy them. Their aim in life 
is to exclude, to be exclusive. They make their culture, 
their social rank, even their religion, a thing which 
separates them from the rest of humanity, rather than a 
thing which binds them to it. That culture is a 
spurious culture, that religion a false religion, no matter 
in what terms they express it. To me it is a source 
of profound unhappiness that all persons cannot share 
in what God has given me to enjoy. My religion 
means more to me than it meant before when I can 
induce another man to accept it. With every new 
believer the faith of all becomes stronger. When 
religion bestows the greatest blessings it is most loved. 
The truths which illumine my own life shine with 
tenfold brightness when I see other men walking in 
their light. It is only when truths are broadly dissem- 
inated and generally accepted that they become great 
and useful, and it is for this that all noble minds labor. 
If a hundred men light their torches at my torch the 
world is so much brighter, and my torch does not 
burn more dimly. The time will come when a better 
generation of men will look back to us with surprise. 

34 



THE GOOD SAMARITAN 

They will regard our luxury, our ostentation, the 
splendor of our private life as proofs of our barbarity 
because it coexisted with and was untouched by so 
much misery. When I see men and women fighting the 
bitter battle with poverty and want my heart bleeds 
for them, but I pity them more for their ignorance and 
moral blindness than I do for their poverty. The sad- 
dest thought to me is that men must live like brutes, 
blind and ignorant, never knowing those truths which 
make life a blessing. 

When Jesus finished this glorious parable he said, 
"Go, and do thou likewise. 55 Why should we not do 
this? Is there any field in the world better worth 
cultivating than human happiness? Does any plant 
or tree bear better fruit than the gratitude of the 
human heart? Can we dig more precious treasures 
out of the earth than we discover in human nature? 
Why should we think that the character, the health, 
the happiness and salvation of the humblest, lowest 
person is beneath our dignity or beyond our power? 
Happiness is not for one, it is not for two, nor for a few, 
nor for many, but for all. Only the happiness of the 
whole world can satisfy us. Therefore in this world 
we can never really be happy because we see so many 
that are unhappy. God alone knows the way to 
happiness, and He is happy only because He is leading 
us to it. 



IV 

JESUS' JUDGMENT OF MEN 

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with 
him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 

And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate 
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 

St. Matthew xxv: 31-33. 

BELIEF in a judgment to come is one of the oldest 
and the justest ideas which have taken possession 
of the mind of man. The first principle of every moral 
religion is: God is just. But when thoughtful men in 
every age have observed life as it is, what has scandalized 
them most is its injustice. They have seen the violence 
of the tryant, and they have heard the unanswered 
prayer of the oppressed. They have seen the crafty 
sinner growing old and rich and honorable. Like 
Ecclesiastes, they have witnessed the funerals of 
criminals celebrated in the very cities in which they 
did their worst deeds, while the righteous seek their 
bread out of desolate places. The hope of a nation 
or the stay and glory of a family is stricken down, while 
the spoiler of his country grows and prospers, and the 
man whose life is but a burden to himself and a morti- 
fication to his friends Death seems to forget altogether. 



JESUS' JUDGMENT OF MEN 

Spectacles such as these have naturally given rise to 
sad misgivings in religious minds. The course of this 
world seems to be such a violation of moral order and 
justice that religious men have felt themselves bound to 
maintain that the world as it exists is not the perfect 
expression of the will of God, but that God reserves to 
Himself the final judgment of all human actions. That 
this is not an absurd idea is proved by the single fact 
that Immanuel Kant was willing to stake his hope of 
immortality, and even his faith in God, on the consider- 
ation that there must be reparation in eternity for the 
injustices of time. As to the nature of this judgment, 
different nations and different ages have represented it 
according to their conception of what is most worthy 
of God. "Did you think that we created you for fun," 
Allah asks, in the Koran, "or that you should not appear 
before us?" And again: "We will establish the scales 
of equity at the Resurrection, and no soul shall be 
wronged even of the weight of a mustard-seed. We 
will repay and we are sufficient as accountants." 
However their ideas of justice vary, and however bold 
the flights of their poetic fancy, all serious religions of 
mankind have proclaimed with one voice, "It is ap- 
pointed unto man once to die and after that the 
judgment." 

It is therefore a matter of great importance to 
Christians that Jesus Christ gave this ancient belief 
the sanction of his authority, and that he has drawn for 
us his matchless pictures of the Last Day. In this saying 
Jesus gives us his judgment of human life. Did Jesus 

37 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

intend this solemn description as a parable or as a 
warning of what is actually coming ? Unless we are 
sure it is a parable it would be wise to act as if it were 
literally true. In this great narrative he tells us that 
he himself will be our judge. Sincere believers will 
find nothing strange in this. They will rather rejoice 
that he who has borne our flesh and felt its temptations 
is to judge us. We may even reverently say that no 
one who does not know all the strangeness of human 
life from experience is fitted to pass a final judgment 
on it. And yet I would prefer that no one turn away 
from this thought with a smile as if it were a mere in- 
nocent piece of Christian mythology we were discussing. 
It is not easy to escape the judgment of Christ. If 
he has no other right over us he has the right of the 
Master to judge the work of a beginner. Until we 
attain the flawless perfection of his character, and our 
soul is great enough to embrace a world in love, and our 
life is pure enough, wonderful enough to serve as the 
embodied ideal of virtue to millions of human beings, 
Christ will continue to judge us. Auguste Comte once 
complained to a friend of the failure of his Religion of 
Humanity to supersede Christianity, and his friend 
replied: "Auguste, you have not taken the right 
method. If you wish to supersede Jesus Christ, the 
proper course for you to take is to be crucified and then 
rise from the dead on the third day." 

Turning now to the principles by which Jesus 
declares he will judge men, the two things which 
impress us most are his wonderful generosity and his 

38 



JESUS' JUDGMENT OF MEN 

perfect morality. In these respects his disposition is so 
noble, so free, so indifferent to all secondary con- 
siderations, and so terribly in earnest in his insistence 
on the one thing needful that this statement has never 
become popular. In the light of this great saying of 
Jesus, so many of the things we consider great become so 
small, or totally disappear, that the Church has been 
afraid to accept it literally or to teach it to her children. 
Even to this day when we read these words with open 
eyes their boldness takes our breath away. Jesus, for 
example, says no word about beliefs or observances, 
about baptism or church-membership. Stranger than 
that, he does not ask the souls arrayed before him in 
regard to their disposition toward himself, whether 
they accepted him or rejected him, acknowledged him 
or denied him. He does not ask how we treated him, 
but only how we treated one another. And it is per- 
fectly plain that some at least of those saved and blessed 
persons whom he welcomes to his Kingdom do not pre- 
tend that they have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, 
and visited the sick for the sake of Jesus. Honest 
and good people, they tell him to his face that they 
had not discerned him in that hungry, thirsty, naked 
humanity for whom they had done what they could. 
What does he say then? "Nay, but ye did it in my 
spirit, therefore ye are mine." That would have been 
generous and touching, but what he says is more 
generous and touching: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto 
one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto 
me." Every member of that humanity I love so much 

39 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

that he who has fed and clad and visited it in its dis- 
tress has fed and clad and visited me, and here, before 
men and angels, I acknowledge my debt to him and 
throw round him the arms of my protecting love. If 
that is not generosity, if that is not pure disinterested 
love, it would be difficult to say where love or generosity 
has ever expressed itself on this earth. 

Moreover, the judgment of Jesus is terribly moral. 
There are a great many ideas which men have enter- 
tained in regard to the judgment of God which are not 
moral at all, but they find no place here. It would not 
be moral for God to condemn men because of their 
belief and opinions, for these are usually formed by 
influences over w^hich we have little control, and, besides, 
every honorable man believes and thinks what he 
considers true. It would not be moral for God to reject 
men because in His Providence He had caused them to 
live at a time or in a place in which it was impossible for 
them to know of Christ. It would not be moral for 
God either to save men or to damn them out of mere 
caprice or indifference without regard to their merit or 
demerit, according to an extreme form of the doctrine of 
Predestination. Among the traditions related of Mo- 
hammed we read that when God made the human race 
He took an enormous lump of clay out of which all 
mankind was to be formed, and in which, in a manner, it 
pre-existed. Having divided the clod into two parts, 
He turned one half into hell, crying out, as He did so, 
"These to hell fire and I care not." The other part He 
projected into heaven, exclaiming, "And these to 

40 



JESUS' JUDGMENT OF MEN 

heaven and I care not." As far as the story ascribes 
to God brutal disregard of human happiness or misery 
it misrepresents the mind of Mohammed, but it is 
hardly worse than much that has palmed itself off as 
Christian theology. But how different all this is from 
the noble seriousness of Christ. He has no great book 
in which the names of the elect were enrolled ages before 
they were born. He does not ask where we were born or 
what we professed, but what we did, and in asking this 
question he does not demand unusual and difficult deeds 
which lie in the power of few, but those simple acts of 
humanity and loving service which we may perform 
every day, and which, we may say, Nature herself 
teaches. Plainly, this is one of the fundamental say- 
ings of Jesus which goes to the root of his conception 
of life and of religion. 

Yet in our admiration for the magnanimity of Jesus, 
which is seldom recognized as it should be, let us not 
miss one of the most important points of the great 
saying. In his account of the Judgment he asks but 
one question, but he asks that with terrible earnestness. 
If he said "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the 
Kingdom," he also said, "Depart, ye cursed, into ever- 
lasting fire," and when we come to this part of the 
strange story and ask why the Lover of men pro- 
nounced this terrible malediction on them it becomes 
stranger still. For the men whom Jesus condemns 
and from whom he shudderingly withdraws himself 
he does not accuse of any crimes. He does not say 
"Depart, ye rebels, ye blasphemers, ye thieves and 

41 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

adulterers." The only accusation he brings against 
them is not for what they have done, but for what 
they have left undone. They are those who have 
stood aside from the struggle, who contributed nothing 
to the cause of humanity — those human worms who 
gnaw their way through life consuming all and leaving 
only a train of corruption in their path. "For I was 
ahungered, and ye gave me no meat; thirsty, and ye 
gave me no drink. I was a stranger, and ye took me 
not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in 
prison, and ye visited me not." Then their surprise is 
just as genuine as the surprise of the saved. They 
were not conscious of having neglected any impor- 
tant and obvious duties. They had not deliberately 
turned their backs on Jesus. Their answering question 
comes back as full of curiosity as it is full of agony: 
"Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or naked, 
or a stranger, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister 
unto thee?" And still the only accusation Jesus makes 
is, "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of 
these, ye did it not to me." 

Now I believe that the impression which this story 
makes on those who consider it without preconceived 
ideas is a peculiar one. If, for example, it was not 
contained in our Bible, but had been recently dis- 
covered written on some old Egyptian papyrus and its 
authenticity were admitted, it might give us a de- 
cidedly new conception of Christianity. We may have 
considered as paramount among our Christian duties 
the necessity of right belief, keeping ourselves respect- 

42 



JESUS' JUDGMENT OF MEN 

able, care in the observance of certain ordinances, and 
avoiding the injury of others. And yet, according to 
the solemn declaration of Jesus, we may go on doing 
these things all our lives only to hear him say at last, 
"Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire," and no 
doubt we should be just as much surprised as those 
who called him "Lord" and asked, "When saw we 
thee?" etc. 

And yet, perhaps, one should not push such a saying 
as this too far. If it is not a parable intended to teach 
one powerful and touching lesson, it is at most a bold 
and rapid sketch from which much must necessarily be 
omitted. Making, then, these necessary deductions, 
the two great facts still remain as firm as ever. So far 
as the weakness of human nature is concerned, Christ's 
judgment is very lenient, but in regard to our moral 
disposition toward our fellow-men it is very severe. 

To judge man's conduct by a standard of abstract 
and perfect righteousness and to make his eternal 
doom depend upon his ability to withstand such an 
ordeal would be both futile and cruel. Judged by such 
a standard, every human being save one who ever drew 
the breath of life would be condemned. Nothing is 
more certain than that human nature is imperfect and 
full of sin, and those persons who look for perfection 
either in themselves or in their friends are grossly and 
damnably deceived. But, on the other hand, man pos- 
sesses great possibilities of improvement. Whether we 
consider what individual men favored by nature and 
circumstances have made themselves, or whether we 

43 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

look at the history of the race on this planet and 
perceive that this spiritualizing, uplifting process, far 
from exhausting itself, gathers strength and acts with 
greater power as time passes, it is hard to believe 
that God will place a final barrier in the way of any 
human soul which by God's patience and by His foster- 
ing care might succeed at last in eradicating its evil 
and in attaining the degree of perfection of which its 
nature is capable. And yet Christ's rejection of those 
who have stood apart from the struggle, who have fed 
no hungry, clothed no naked, and visited no sick, is 
comprehensible when we remember that the very 
condition of this vast and splendid upward march of 
humanity is sacrifice. Without sacrifice progress — 
that is to say, final salvation — is impossible. It is 
the willing sacrifice of father and mother that makes 
the home. It is the sacrifice of the good that re- 
claims the evil. It is the sacrifice of the well that 
heals the sick. It is the life-long sacrifice of great 
men that gives us science, art, and literature. It is 
the sacrifice of those who have something which 
makes life possible to those who have nothing. As 
long as this sentiment of unselfish service is free 
and strong, life is sound and happy. The weak are 
protected, the ignorant are taught, home is sacred 
and blessed, the arts and sciences flourish, noble 
characters are formed, and the state, guarded by the 
virtue and devotion of her citizens, is as strong as 
steel. In short, all those energies are at work which 
advance humanity both individually and collectively. 

44 



JESUS' JUDGMENT OF MEN 

But when in any country religion, which is the fruitful 
cause of this miracle, begins to lose its power over the 
minds of the multitude, when the ideals of Jesus Christ 
are obscured and forgotten, when sacrifice is supplanted 
by egotism and self-indulgence, a very singular change 
takes place. Men, losing the infinite hope with which 
Jesus had inspired them, and having become skeptical 
and selfish, are no longer capable of anything great. 
They value their unhappy lives so much that they will 
not sacrifice them for anything. Society, no longer 
banded together by high ideals, becomes corrupt. 
The state, no longer protected by the valor of its 
citizens, becomes an easy prey. A swarm of egotisms 
begins to pick to pieces the fabric which devotion once 
reared. In short, all those disintegrating influences 
are at work which annihilate progress and which, if 
unrestricted, would reduce man to his primitive con- 
dition of individual rapacity. The conduct which 
Jesus condemns is that which would render real 
salvation impossible. 

There is one other very strange touch in this saying 
of Christ: the surprise of the saved and the lost when 
they first saw themselves as they were. Perhaps this 
is the reason. Only in death does a man see what he 
has done for others and what others have done for him, 
what spiritual treasures he has accumulated during life 
and what use he has made of these treasures. In this 
world we never really see ourselves or know ourselves. 
Only that portion of our soul on which consciousness 
sheds its narrow beam is visible; while all around the 

45 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

great dewy fields are wrapped in darkness, this or that 
chamber of the soul's mansion is momentarily bright. 
Then again it is wrapped in obscurity. So man lives, 
a stranger to himself, forgetful often of his greatest 
treasures. But in the moment of death, when eternal 
night closes forever the eye of flesh, a mysterious dawn 
begins to lighten over the whole soul, and all that was 
forgotten returns, not as here, by the painfully seeking 
and piecing together the fragments of consciousness, 
but with one glance clear and comprehensive as an 
eagle's we shall see the forgotten facts of life and life as 
a whole. To many that sight will be glorious, yet 
probably no one will see himself without shame. 

Christ's advice to us, then, is that we keep our 
hearts pure and also that we keep them warm. If you 
wish Jesus to receive you kindly at the Judgment, re- 
ceive him kindly when, poor and faint and sick and 
discouraged, he knocks at your door, remembering that 
you will yet knock at his door. "Saved thyself, save 
others. Having gained the farther shore, bring others 
over. Redeemed thyself, redeem. Having found 
peace, make peace." (Gautama Buddha.) 



IDEALISM AND DEVOTION 

And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw 
the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the 
tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. — Exodus xxxii :19. 

MOSES had just come down from the Mount. 
For forty days and forty nights he had stood 
upon the awful heights of Sinai, alone with God and 
with his own conscience. This mount of itself is one 
of the most singular objects on the face of the globe. 
Formed entirely of pink granite, which the sun has 
bathed for centuries without penetrating, it is the 
exact likeness of a world without water, like the moon. 
At times the atmosphere is so clear that there seems to 
be no atmosphere. Again, dark and terrible clouds of 
vapor gather about its summits, and storms crash down 
its sides, producing a kind of metallic concert, composed 
of the tones of the drum, the cannon, the trumpet, and 
the bell. But storms, elsewhere beneficent, are here 
simply destructive. Of all that constitutes nature — 
plants, animals, men — here is nothing but stone, crush- 
ing life and annihilating every attempt at cultivation. 1 
Primitive man has always lodged his gods upon 

1 Renan. 

47 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

mountains of eternal snow. Those untrodden heights 
so full of mystery, those dizzy walls of eagle-baffling 
rock, far from all possible contamination, appeared to 
be the most suitable home for the Deity. There he 
can be in the world and yet not of the world. So from 
the most hoary antiquity this Mount Sinai had spread 
terror far and wide. It was always called the Mount of 
Elohim, the Mount of God. It was this mount that 
Moses climbed. Upon those shining heights, limpid as 
crystal or dark and gloomy with thick enveloping 
clouds, he stood face to face with Nature in its most 
overpowering mood and with Nature's God. What 
thoughts took possession of his lonely heart as he saw 
the sun, bathing the western heavens in gorgeous colors, 
drop behind Egypt, the land of his people's captivity? 
Or, as he looked out at night from the cleft of the rocks 
at the storm hurrying by and saw the dark clouds 
suddenly open to reveal the glory of God, the sharp, 
vivid, intolerable lightning, and felt the solid frame of 
the mountain jar and tremble beneath the crashing 
thunder, re-echoed from peak to peak until at last it 
died away into absolute silence — what emotions then 
filled his soul? Did he feel himself crushed and anni- 
hilated by the immensity of Nature? In the presence 
of these wild and devastating forces did he feel the utter 
insignificance of man? Could he associate this infinite 
Deity, riding upon the heavens as upon a horse, with 
the small voice that spoke to him out of the Burning 
Bush, with the God that had chosen Israel and that 
loves men? Fateful moment when man, lifted far 

48 



IDEALISM AND DEVOTION 

above the petty objects of his daily striving, finds 
himself alone, face to face with the immensity of Nature, 
so empty or so full of God according to the depth of his 
spirituality ! 

What will he make of it? Will he divine the secret 
of this marvelous scene? As the stars break out and 
spangle the black vault of heaven, will he read his own 
infinite destiny in the infinite skies? Will he tear the 
veil from Nature and discover even the hinder parts of 
the Deity? or will he look within his own heart and 
discover within himself a principle superior to mere 
immensity and power? Will he hear in the earnest cry 
of the creature for purity and enlightenment a voice 
more solemn than the rolling thunder or the rattling 
hail? Will he dare, once for all, to utter the grand 
affirmation that the God whom man in his better 
moments adores must be good? Michael Angelo has 
not made his colossal statue of Moses a whit too large. 
Difficult as it is, after the lapse of thousands of years, 
to picture to ourselves such personalities as his, the 
mere fact that certain human beings tower so astonish- 
ingly above their fellows convinces us that in life they 
were giants. The man who amid the thunders of 
Sinai distinguished the Ten Words of the Law, the man 
who tore from Nature, or, as we ought to say, received 
from God those eternal sanctions of the moral life to 
which the whole world has been converted, those bul- 
warks of humanity within which it is safe, without which 
it perishes, deserves the halo with which history has 
surrounded his head. 

4 49 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

But now Moses has had his vision, and he must come 
down. In this world it is not given man to stand long 
face to face with the Infinite. He is too weak a creature, 
or perhaps it is because there are so many others who 
can see God only in some inspired face, to whom the 
vision must be carried ere it fades. So Moses descends, 
bearing the two tables of the Law in his hands. Can we 
wonder that his face shone? How his heart must have 
throbbed and bounded with joy as he thought of the 
value of the gift he was bringing to his people. He has 
fought the battle alone, and the most distant genera- 
tions of men shall reap the fruits of his victory. He 
has proclaimed the Law that the last dawn of reckoning 
shall read. 

Alas, what a disillusion was in store for him! As he 
drew near the camp he heard the cries of the people 
shouting as if for war as they prostrated themselves 
naked in their wanton dance around the golden calf, 
crying at the top of their voices, "This is thy God, O 
Israel, that brought thee out of the land of Egypt. As 
for this Moses, we know not what has become of him." 
But the next moment they knew, for there, with blazing 
eye, his countenance still shining with the glory of the 
Lord, the giant stood, bearing in his hands the priceless 
message of the God they had already rejected and 
forsaken. As when the moving finger arrested the 
laughter of Belshazzar's harlots, as death sometimes sur- 
prises us in the midst of the splendors of life, as a man 
warned by certain recollections in the midst of his 
debauchery suddenly becomes thoughtful and begins to 

50 




IDEALISM AND DEVOTION 

examine himself, — the dance ceased, the naked ones per- 
ceived that they were naked, Aaron came forward with 
his pitiful excuses, and the people stood trembling, 
awaiting the result. The next instant Moses 5 wrath, 
till then pent up with difficulty, blazed forth. It was 
then, I suspect, that he spake unadvisedly with his lips 
and lost the Promised Land. How can such a people as 
this comprehend the holy vision he has seen upon the 
Mount? Of what use is it to them in the solemn name 
of Duty to deliver to them the pure commandments of 
morality? Let them worship the "golden calf." It is 
all they are fit for. So he raised the two tables and 
dashed them to pieces on the rocks. Then the sight 
of his broken and ruined ideals recalled him in a measure 
to himself. He discovered that the people were not so 
dead to God as he supposed, and after a while he set 
about restoring the commandments of God that he 
himself had destroyed. 

That second sojourn on the Mount must have been 
very different from the first. It lacked the enthusiasm, 
the fresh delight of the first vision. He is not now face 
to face with God wrestling for new truth. He has but to 
restore what God formerly revealed to him; yet we may 
believe that in a certain sense the revelation means more 
to him now than it meant before. Must not even this 
terrible experience have taught Moses to feel man's need 
of a holy God more deeply than he had felt it before? 
Once his heart had been filled only with the sense of 
God: now it is filled with God and a deeper sympathy 
for erring, sinful humanity. On the one side is God, 

51 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

longing to reveal Himself, and on the other man, who 
needs so much to receive that revelation. The vision 
has come in contact with reality, and, though by that 
contact it seems to have been shattered, only the letter 
has perished; the spirit has gained fresh strength. 
The first battle was lost, or, rather, Moses thought it 
was lost because it was not won in a day; but a second 
battle began that is going on still. I cannot doubt that 
this was a turning-point in Moses' life. Henceforth 
we see this fiery Moses enduring the contradictions of 
sinners with infinite patience and sweetness, and with 
that divine charity which beareth all things, believeth 
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. To 
receive the truth from God, to inscribe it upon stone 
and give it to the people, is truly a great thing. But 
to make this truth loved, to write it legibly and in- 
delibly upon the hearts of men, is incomparably harder 
and greater. If Moses had stopped short with breaking 
the commandments in pieces he would have deserved to 
rank with those idealists whose dreams dissolve at the 
terrible touch of reality. Because he had the courage 
to restore what his hands had destroyed, to rescue his 
broken vision, to clothe it anew and inscribe it in the 
heart of humanity, he is one of those few men to whom 
it is given perceptibly to advance the cause of good- 
ness in this world. 

This story represents a common experience of life. 
No one haunted by high hopes and generous purposes es- 
capes it altogether. On the one side there is the vision, 
the pure and holy truth God has revealed to our souls, 

52 



IDEALISM AND DEVOTION 

and on the other there are the men and women for 
whose sakes that truth was given. Our souls are so 
full of the vision we think we have but to point it out 
to others and they will see it; we love it so much that it 
seems to us impossible that they should not love it too. 
So we come down from the mountain, our faces shining, 
our hearts beating, bearing the new commandment, the 
revelation that is to change all things, and suddenly we 
come face to face with the multitude. We announce 
our message; they are quite indifferent. We make the 
great revelation: they do not tremble, they are not 
aroused to action, they are not even interested; the 
more vehement we grow, the more they smile. Here 
is precisely the point at which every effort to improve 
man is either shattered or gains its first strength. 
What shall we do? Shall we give it all up? Shall we 
dash our holy revelation to the earth and retire broken- 
hearted and humiliated to watch the crowd whirling 
around their golden calf? If so, shall we ever have 
strength to take up our divine burden again and rewrite 
our message in the light of the lives of those men and 
women for whom it is intended, to throw into our task 
the new element of devotion, to suffer, to be patient, to 
love men at least as much as we love truth, and to be 
thankful at last for a small and partial victory instead 
of the instantaneous and complete triumph for which 
we had hoped? 

A man becomes impressed with the injustice and 
inequalities of our present social life. It seems strange 
to him that with so much work to be done, so large a 

53 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

proportion of our laboring population should find it im- 
possible to get work; that with grain and cattle enough 
to feed the world men and women should die of hunger; 
that with our inexhaustible coal-fields and forests the 
children of the poor should freeze; that with wool and 
cotton enough to clothe this planet they should go 
naked. Such a state of things, he says, is both wrong 
and ridiculous. It cannot be the will of our Heavenly 
Father that a few should have a superfluity they cannot 
use, while to the vast majority life is a joyless struggle 
followed by a still more joyless old age. "What doth 
it avail this Prometheus to have stolen fire from heaven, 
to have mastered all the forces of Nature, to have 
invented every form of labor-saving machine, if the 
vulture Poverty is forever to tear his entrails ?" So he 
sets himself to work to study the conditions of this 
inequality, and at last he comes forward with a program, 
a plan, which, if it could be carried out, would create a 
heaven on earth. What is the result? Absolutely 
none. The people are too busy dancing around their 
golden calf to pay the least attention to him. The rich, 
whom he calls to sacrifice their possessions, curse him. 
The poor, to whom he promises Paradise, mock him. 
It makes no difference if the system he proposes be as 
wise as the Ten Words of Moses: no one will have 
anything to do with it. So in wrath he casts it from 
him and surrenders the people to the sufferings they 
seem to him so richly to deserve. But now, if he really 
loves humanity, the time will come when he takes up 
his broken tablets again and sets about writing them in 

54 



IDEALISM AND DEVOTION 

the hearts of a very few persons. If men will not 
listen to his words they may be touched by his deeds. 
Perhaps he goes down to one of the dark places of the 
earth, and there, according to his strength, he repro- 
duces the life of Jesus, the life of absolute unselfishness; 
and now people begin to listen to him and look to him. 
He will not accomplish anything great. He will not 
succeed in inaugurating the day of the just. But he 
will diminish a little the infinite sorrow of the world; 
he will dry up some pools of this ocean of tears; he will 
set his faithful mark on his generation; he will add his 
quota to the sum of human goodness and happiness. 

To a woman comes the great romance of life in the 
pure passion of love idealized. Little by little she feels 
the old personal, individual life, with its narrow limita- 
tions, its sense of "mine" and "thine" slipping away 
as she enters that world of infinite desires and hopes 
which opens once in our lives to receive us all. In- 
structed only by the innocence of her heart, she imag- 
ines that those radiant dreams constitute the whole of 
life. As Emerson says of Guy: "How high, how 
aristocratic, how Roman his mien and manners! To 
live with him were life indeed!" Alas! God alone 
never disappoints us. Love, to be perfect, must avoid 
the soiling contact of reality. To Petrarch, Laura was 
a dream. Dante saw Beatrice for the last time when 
she was twelve years old. As for Guy, he is decidedly 
mundane. His noble air conceals an empty head or a 
cold heart. His history did not begin on the great day 
of that first meeting. He has debts; he takes snuff; 

55 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

in short, he is a man. And with that discovery the 
heavens grow black, "shades of the prison-house begin 
to fall." So begins that struggle that seems to super- 
ficial eyes the struggle between husband and wife, 
but is in reality the heroic effort of love to save its 
possessions, to preserve its divine illusions, amid the 
general wreck of its ideals. Compromise! A second- 
ary happiness ! Ah me, how ardent souls revolt against 
those cruel words ! And yet for most men and women 
that is life — a compromise between rapture and 
despair, a fraction of varying value, of which what we 
have is the numerator, what we desire, the denomi- 
nator. Happiness, especially first happiness, on which 
the whole of life sometimes hangs, is a plant of tender 
growth. Like certain sensitive plants, it withers at 
the first unkind touch. Alas, how often, in our blind 
folly, we uproot the plant that, encouraged to grow, 
would have sheltered us our whole lives long, in whose 
branches the birds of heaven would have made their 
nests and sung to us! And yet even that uprooted 
plant, replaced in the soil of the heart, watered by 
tears and tended by affection, has been known to grow 
again. Devotion rebuilds the house that disillusion or 
ignorance has torn down. 

Of her two fights with the beryl stone, 
Lost the first, but the second won. 

So in all life are those two principles, idealism and 
devotion. They alone make life worth living; but the 
first is helpless without the second, and the second is 

56 



IDEALISM AND DEVOTION 

blind without the first. Of their fruitful marriage all 
great things are born, but each is barren without the 
other. (That is the foolishness of most of our preaching. 
It may sometimes alter opinions, but how often it 
affects conduct we dare not inquire.) The vision must 
come down to earth and bravely grapple with human 
affairs, or it is nothing. In that contact with reality it 
is usually shattered. Then devotion gathers up those 
broken fragments, pieces them together, and rewrites 
its message on a substance harder and more imperish- 
able than stone — the human heart. To be able to do 
this, to retain our faith in our ideals when broken and 
trodden beneath men's feet in the dust, to know how to 
lay aside our inward sadness, to dismiss our enervating 
doubts and struggle on, to continue our march, sus- 
tained only by the thought of duty and an unyielding 
will, to make the most of life as it is given to us — that 
is the supreme test of all great souls. That is the 
real victory of faith that overcometh the world. 



VI 

FORTY YEARS OF AGNOSTICISM 

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. — St. John's Gospel xvii: 3. 

A GENERATION ago Christianity was staggering 
under what appeared to be one of the most 
deadly blows it had ever received. It was the attack 
epitomized in the word "agnosticism/ 51 Professor 
Huxley, the author of the word, declared that agnos- 
ticism is to theology what death is to life, the last 
stage of its evolution, which is dissolution. Forty 
years have passed, a sufficiently long time for an idea 
to sink into the minds of men, and we see them as 
much preoccupied with the old spiritual ideals as 
ever. And yet things are not exactly as they were. 
Much of the criticism of agnosticism was just and 
merited. It has caused us to look to our foundations 
and to recognize a large element of agnosticism in 
Christ. It has made religion less rationalistic and 
more spiritual. But the bitterness of the attack has 

1 This expression was invented by Huxley in 1869 to express the attitude 
of mind of those who hold that we can have scientific or real knowledge 
only of phenomena, and that such conceptions as God and immortality, lying, 
as he believed, beyond the range of experience, can neither be proved nor 
disproved, and that therefore they should neither be denied nor affirmed. 

58 






FORTY YEARS OF AGNOSTICISM 

passed, and the complete revolution of human aims and 
efforts which was expected to spring from the scientific 
movement of the latter half of the nineteenth century 
has failed to take place. Thankful as we are for the 
progress of science, we no longer make a religion or 
a fetish of it. We know better than our predecessors 
knew both what science can do for us and what it 
cannot do. 

What has taken the sting out of agnosticism is 
recognition of the fact that we are disposed toward 
the soul exactly as we are disposed toward God. 
Apart from self-consciousness we know one just as 
little as we know the other. God and the soul belong 
together. He who believes in one believes in the other, 
and for precisely the same reasons, and he who denies 
the one denies the other. We look into the face of a 
friend and we see something. Not without reason is 
the face called the mirror of the soul. But do we see 
all? Much is too deep, much too subtle, much too 
hidden for our glance to penetrate. We look into the 
face of Nature and we see more, but here also much is 
too deep, much is too high, too complex, too difficult 
for us to grasp. Yet as the face reveals the soul, so 
Nature reveals God, by thought, by sympathy, by 
intuition, not by mechanical processes. And as spirit 
speaks to spirit, so God speaks to our hearts. Hux- 
ley's chief defect was that he wished to make the 
methods of physics the sole criterion of all human 
experience. 

In this sense most thoughtful men are now agnostic, 

59 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

yet this discovery has not caused us to love our friends 
the less nor to change our attitude to them. Neither 
has it caused us to love God less, but it has led us to 
depend more on the intuitive powers of the soul and less 
on mere speculations. Agnosticism, in accomplishing 
this, has given a death-blow to dogmatism. We no 
longer believe ourselves to be in such exclusive posses- 
sion of truth that we regard all who differ from us as 
culpable or demented. The old dogmatic sermons 
which from a text or a mere idea proceeded to con- 
struct heaven and earth and to fathom the inmost 
recesses of God's being are no longer preached, not 
merely because congregations can no longer be induced 
to listen to them, but because preachers of talent can 
no longer be found to preach them. The defect of much 
of the older theology is its unreality. It was learned 
enough and logical enough, but it corresponded to little 
either in Nature or in human life. Setting out from no 
verifiable hypothesis and adding thought to thought, 
as a spider spins her web out of her own entrails, it 
touched reality at few points. What we desire is not to 
know so much about God as to know God. In argu- 
ments of this kind it is as easy to prove one side as it is 
the other, provided one is logical and does not con- 
tradict oneself. In these battles of words he wins the 
victory who thinks that he has won it. 

The first is so, the second so, 
Therefore the third and fourth are so, 
And if the first had not been seen 
The third and fourth had never been. 
60 



FORTY YEARS OF AGNOSTICISM 

This much, then, we may willingly concede. There 
is a knowledge of God, entirely speculative, which 
turns out to be no knowledge at all, because it does not 
correspond to any known or felt reality. For this 
conception we are not indebted to Professor Huxley. 
In philosophy he had been preceded by Kant and 
Hume. In religion Buddha had perceived this fact as 
clearly as Huxley perceived it. Confucius was a 
conscious agnostic. Jesus was most guarded in all his 
utterances as to God. He sought God through the 
heart and the will, and in all his authentic teaching 
there is not one speculative opinion or an argument as 
to God's being and nature. Isaiah affirmed: "Verily 
thou art a God that hidest thyself." "My ways are 
not as your ways." Job ironically inquired: "Canst 
thou by searching find out God, canst thou find out the 
Almighty to perfection? He is higher than Heaven. 
What canst thou know? deeper than hell, what canst 
thou do?" And Ecclesiastes, exceeding them all, 
declared, "Thou hast set eternity in their hearts, thou 
hast unrolled the world before their eyes, but in such a 
manner that from the beginning to the end they can 
know nothing about it." If there were anything fatal 
to true and spiritual religion in such a conception, we 
may be sure that such men as these would not have 
embraced it. 

It might seem, then, a very simple matter, as Herbert 
Spencer thought, to patch up a truce, and to effect a 
reconciliation between religion and science on this very 
basis, on the ground that religion is altogether a matter 

61 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

of faith and science altogether a matter of knowledge, 
and that their aims and scope are therefore mutually 
exclusive. This is the common refuge of superficial 
minds, but to thoughtful religious minds such a recon- 
ciliation is inadequate, because science also has its faith 
and religion has its knowledge. The buried founda- 
tions of things on which all science rests are always 
matters of faith, not of knowledge. Even logic and 
mathematics are unable to prove their own first prin- 
ciples, but are obliged to appeal to an inner sense in man 
to which religion also appeals. Moreover, though faith 
outstrips knowledge and experience, it sets out from 
them, and, on the whole, the larger number of facts faith 
can find to rest on, the stronger and the happier it is. 
Faith without knowledge is pure superstition. It is 
not possible to split up human nature in this manner 
and to divide the soul into water-tight compartments, 
and if we should succeed in doing so we should only 
deform it and cripple it. We are suffering too much 
from dissociation already. If we would avoid a 
graver mental disease we must find some way to unify 
and harmonize our higher faculties. 

The very question, "Do we know anything of God?" 
marks a great advance over the eighteenth century. 
Then the question was not, "What do we know of God?" 
but, " Is there a God ? Does any unifying spiritual power 
exist?" This question is now seldom asked, almost 
never by educated persons. The tacit assumption of 
the existence of God on the part of almost all thinking 
men marks an immense progress. 

62 



FORTY YEARS OF AGNOSTICISM 

But this is not all. Science also has its creed, its 
supreme religious confession of faith, though it is 
seldom spoken, and if we violate the tenets of that 
creed it rebukes us and proves by overwhelming 
evidence that we are wrong. 

The first article in the creed of science is, God is 
great — 'not great as we once thought Him when we 
regarded this little earth as the center of His thought and 
the theater of His operation, and supposed that sun, 
moon, and stars were but lanterns hung in the canopy 
of heaven to give us light; but vastly, immeasurably 
great. We look up into the same sky into which 
Abraham looked up on the plains of Shinar, but with 
how different an eye! We know the illimitable spaces 
which separate those shining wanderers from us and 
from one another. To us the innumerable stars which 
differ from one another in glory are worlds like our own, 
or suns shining by their own light. Beyond the range 
of our most powerful instrument, beyond the limit of our 
utmost thought, flies the thought that there is no limit 
until, at last, thought, exhausted, stands still. Upon 
every educated mind this sight still produces the effect 
that it produced on Immanuel Kant when he said, "Two 
things in this world astonish and confound me, the 
starry heavens at night and the height and purity of the 
moral law." 

The second article in the creed of science is, God is 
One; for it shows us all things proceeding from one 
Source and according to one mighty plan. Whether 
science can establish monotheism or not, it is the only 

63 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

form of theism to which it gives the least credence. 
William James's whimsical inclination to return to 
polytheism hardly produced a ripple of interest, but 
were religion seriously to manifest such a disposition 
science would instantly rebuke her. 

The third article in the creed of science is, God is 
wise. He employs means to ends. The universe does 
not consist of discrete particles moving at random, 
but of innumerable particles working together to 
attain definite results. I am aware that that must be 
qualified. There is a race of men, not very numerous, 
called materialists, who recognize no purpose in Nature, 
no soul in man, and therefore no intelligence in God, but 
in the face of the overwhelming evidence of purpose and 
of progress Evolution is bringing in, their position 
becomes constantly more untenable. However the eye 
was made and its thirteen marvelous processes assem- 
bled, few persons can bring themselves to believe that it 
was not made to see with. Or when we see a hard 
bit of horn attached to the beak of a chicken which the 
chick actually uses to chip its way out of the shell and 
then drops in a few days, the most natural inference is 
that this bit of horn was made and attached to the 
beak of the chick to help it into its new life and to 
keep it from perishing in the shell. Or when we see a 
spider spinning her web in which she captures the flies on 
which she lives, and hiding herself that they may not 
see her, just as the fisherman spreads his net and hides 
himself that the fishes may not see him, one may sup- 
pose, without insanity, that the purpose in one case is 

64 



FORTY YEARS OF AGNOSTICISM 

to catch flies, just as in the other it is to catch fish. 
At all events, I observe that even those physiologists 
who deny all purpose in Nature break their heads and 
confess their science incomplete so long as there is one 
organ in the human body whose function they cannot 
explain with reference to the economy of the whole. 

There are two ways of viewing Nature, as there are 
two ways of viewing anything. Suppose we have 
before us a page of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." We may 
regard it merely as a physical phenomenon — that is, as 
black impressions on a sheet of white paper. But 
does this quite describe it? Is there not, after all, 
quite a difference between a page on which Shake- 
speare's mind has been at work and another page just 
like it on which black characters have been imprinted 
at haphazard on white pages? If you do not think so, 
try it and see. (Paulsen.) 

Spirit and mechanism, therefore, are not so hostile 
to each other. To attain palpable results one works 
through the other. Grant that the world is a machine: 
so is your body also a machine, yet it is held together, 
lives and acts by the indwelling of an invisible spirit, 
and only as long as there is a soul within it does it hold 
together at all. Neither is there any necessary hos- 
tility between religion and science, — and in using this 
well-worn phrase I have a definite purpose. At most 
there is opposition and antagonism between imperfect 
religion and imperfect science. So long as this hostility 
persists and each regards the other with dislike and 
suspicion man will never attain the high and free 

5 65 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

development of his nature. Part of it will be paralyzed 
by doubt, or dwarfed by suppression, and his whole 
nature will be weakened by the dissociation of his 
noblest faculties. We shall be prevented from under- 
taking tasks which would be easily within our power 
were mind and spirit, knowledge and faith, working 
harmoniously together, but which will ever be beyond 
us as long as these are at variance. We are bidden to 
\ove the Lord our God with all our mind, and it is 
absurd that we should have to choose between piety 
and intelligence when we desire both. 

Science represents truth, sanity, disinterestedness, 
frankness, devotion, accurate observation, and correct 
thinking. It has fashioned an incomparable method 
without which we can do nothing aright. Religion 
represents faith, aspiration, progress, poetry, discon- 
tent with the present, consecration, love of God and 
love of man, self-denial, self-sacrifice. One does not 
have to reflect long to perceive that these precious and 
holy things are both of God or to see in how many ways 
one can help and serve the other. And this is the only 
reconciliation worth trying for. What we want is not 
mere tolerance, not the grudging assent on the part of 
the one to the existence and ideals of the other, but 
the application of scientific method to the problem of 
religion, and the ennobling of science by the religious 
spirit, lacking which it will soon fall into the hands of 
mercenary hucksters and cease to interest us. We 
have one common enemy in the self-seekers of mankind. 

The care and treatment of the sick is one of these 



FORTY YEARS OF AGNOSTICISM 

opportunities. A dozen new ways have been dis- 
covered during the past twenty years by which the 
well and healthy-minded may minister profitably and 
with blessing to the diseased in body and soul. We 
have shown even in the case of consumptives how 
important is the moral condition of the patient, and 
because we have kept this fact constantly before our 
minds we have succeeded in checking and arresting 
the disease in as large a proportion of patients in the 
tenements and slums of Boston as has been relieved by 
the best sanatoria situated in the most favorable lo- 
calities. Yet had we disregarded the exact methods 
of science in dealing with this disease we should have 
cured no one. 

If this is true of such a disease as tuberculosis, in 
which the mind is usually strong and optimistic, it is 
still more true of other diseases in which the whole 
personality is affected and in the case of inveterate 
evil habits. He who under these conditions ignores the 
moral and the spiritual condition of his patient and 
thinks only of the body accomplishes little. A large 
part of the world perfectly understands this now, and 
soon the whole world will know it. Yet here also faith 
and science should work together, for the problem is 
the restoration of the whole man or the creation of the 
new man. 

Prayer is another field that needs the co-operation of 
science and religion. The attitude of many men of 
science toward prayer has been false simply because it 
is unscientific. They have rejected prayer, not because 

67 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

they have personally proved its vanity and worthless- 
ness, but because it does not fit into their preconceived 
view of the order of Nature. For the same reason the 
possibility of radio-activity would have been denied 
until the day when radium was discovered. And yet 
perhaps the power which would unify all our powers is 
passing unseen before our very doors. As a matter of 
fact, almost all men who have rejected and ridiculed 
prayer have been men who never prayed. Such 
criticisms we may regard with the utmost indifference. 
If such men do not care to experiment with prayer they 
should not pronounce upon it. When men who have 
earnestly and faithfully prayed tell me that there is 
nothing in prayer I will believe them if I can, or 
endeavor to discover the defect of their manner of 
praying. Until then I shall continue to follow the 
dictates of my heart, and I will rejoice in the evidence 
of the power of prayer which experience constantly 
reveals to me. 

Yet here, too, we greatly need the help of scientific 
method. We know that if prayer is a real power in 
this universe, like everything else it is under laws, but 
we very dimly apprehend what those laws are. Some- 
times we pray with conviction and power, and ou? 
prayers are mighty and effective. In some way we 
have fulfilled the necessary conditions and have come 
into contact with the Source of power, but we know not 
how we did it. Sometimes for weeks and months our 
prayers seem to rise no higher than the ceiling of our 
rooms and to accomplish nothing, yet we know not 

68 




FORTY YEARS OF AGNOSTICISM 

why. Should we understand prayer as Jesus under- 
stood it] we should become like him, and all things 
would be possible to us; but we are still groping amid 
the very rudiments of it. Here is a wonderful field, 
the most wonderful field in the world, but a field which 
we shall never traverse except under the guidance of 
science and by the aid of its exact methods. 

Social betterment is another task devolving upon 
mankind, a task too great for a crippled and divided 
humanity, but not too great were our aspirations and 
our methods harmonized and united. Religion warns 
us that something is wrong, that our present state of 
social inequality and social injustice does not fulfil the 
law of Christ. Science tells what is wrong, and also 
how those wrongs may be rectified. But until both 
resolutely attack the problem together the task is too 
great for the strength of either. Religion gives us the 
motive, the desire, the necessary enthusiasm to attempt 
it, but without painstaking knowledge and compre- 
hension of the methods by which the cause of humanity 
can really be served religion is helpless. 

The little church in Jerusalem once made the heroic 
experiment, relying on no human help, when "they 
that believed had all things common, and ate their 
bread with gladness and singleness of heart.' • But in 
a few years that experiment came to naught, and 
St. Paul was obliged to take up "a collection" for the 
poor saints which dwelt at Jerusalem. That experi- 
ment has served as an ideal through the ages, but with- 
out scientific knowledge it could not succeed. 

69 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

Lastly, immortality is the final problem which con- 
fronts science. David Strauss looked forward to a day 
when science should have put down her last enemy, 
which is immortality. We look forward to the day 
when science shall establish forever man's survival of 
death on an impregnable basis. Let us not forget that 
this is the way which Jesus chose. He had little to 
say on the general question. He brought forward no 
new arguments in favor of life after death. Jesus' 
contribution to the problem of immortality consisted in 
rising from the dead and in giving his Disciples con- 
crete proofs of his continued existence in the world of 
spirits. 

That is what the world is looking for to-day, and it is 
no credit to American science that it lags so far behind 
the science of other civilized lands in responding to this 
appeal. For two thousand years faith has been 
struggling with this question, which might be settled in 
a single century by the exact methods of scientific 
observation and experiment if the same talent and 
devotion were bestowed upon it as have been given 
to the life of Jesus. Faith and philosophy have car- 
ried their arguments and analogies as far as they will 
go, with the result that those believe in another life 
who are predisposed to such a belief, while the majority 
of men think and act and live and die exactly as they 
would do were this life their only life. But were all 
educated men as convinced of the certainty of another 
life as they are of any of the established laws of Nature, 
and did they know that by a good or evil life and by a 

70 



FORTY YEARS OF AGNOSTICISM 

good or evil conscience they were laying up certain 
happiness or unhappiness for themselves, such knowl- 
edge would have the effect that so tremendous a truth 
ought to possess. I do not propose this as a substitute 
for religion. I too am aware that Jesus said, "If 
they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will 
they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." 
Yet he rose from the dead and men believed, and one 
cannot doubt that the greatest problem before man 
to-day is still his own immortality. 

So on all sides we see opportunities of enlarging and 
strengthening the conditions of human life, which can 
be realized only by the harmonious co-operation of 
our highest faculties. Human nature will always be 
diseased while this profound cleft persists between 
mind and spirit. The period of strife, of bitterness 
and derision and negation is over. The creative 
period of affirmation and of co-operation is at hand. 
The thought flies from one end of the world to the 
other, and the memory which will brighten my last 
hours is that I have been permitted to behold this 
glorious vision and to participate, however humbly, in 
the great work. 



Part II 

ASPECTS OF 
THE LIFE OF JESUS 



Christ's love for individuals 

And behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve 
years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: 

For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be 
whole.— St. Matthew ix:20, 21. 

THIS event took place when the Lord was going 
with his Disciples to the house of Jairus, who had 
summoned him because his little daughter was desper- 
ately ill. A great multitude of people, excited by the 
expectation of the dramatic spectacle they hoped to 
witness, was surging about him, thronging him on 
every side. Among these innumerable contacts he felt 
one of another sort. It was the timid touch of a 
woman, who, abashed and shamefaced and desiring to 
avoid attention, yet hoping to obtain a blessing, gently 
touched the hem of his garment. 

Instantly Jesus stopped and demanded, "Who 
touched me?" The Disciples were disposed to ridicule 
him: "Thou seest how the multitude presseth thee, and 
askest thou, Who touched me?" But he knew the 
difference. It was the touch of faith he felt, the appeal- 
ing touch of some poor human being who desired help 
from him, and, though with his clairvoyant senses he 
knew that faith had met with its response and that the 

75 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

timid appeal had been answered, he was not satisfied. 
He would know more of this suppliant. He would not 
have her go without a more personal contact with him. 
He seems to have divined that it was a woman who had 
done this. "And he looked round about/' we read, 
to see her who had done this thing. "But the woman, 
fearing and trembling, knowing what was done to her, 
came and fell down before him and told him all the 
truth." He did not claim the credit of the act which 
he had not intended to perform. He did not pretend 
there was healing virtue in his clothes, but he spoke to 
her affectionately and kindly, and said, "Daughter, thy 
faith has made thee whole; go in peace and be whole of 
thy plague." 

One of the most touching and most marvelous 
aspects of Christ's life is his love for individuals. 
Marvelous and touching when we remember the tasks 
which were his! Here he was, with his infinite mis- 
sion and the brief moment of his short life in which 
to perform it. His life was not measured like ours, 
by months and years, but by days and weeks. In 
one year, from one springtime to the next springtime, 
he must make the everlasting revelation of God, 
formulate and deliver the thoughts and principles which 
should be the guiding stars of humanity forever after, 
call and train his Disciples, preach the Gospel to 
thousands, and establish his religion so that it should 
be able to continue without him. Who would suppose 
that with all this devolving upon him he would have 
time or strength for aught else? And yet when we 



CHRIST'S LOVE FOR INDIVIDUALS 

look at the life of Jesus, what do we see? We see him 
surrounded by people forever pressing upon him with 
their humble, personal needs. And we see him, not 
shrinking from them, not putting them off with the 
excuse that he is weary, that he has no time for them, 
that he must be alone in order to think or to pray, but 
welcoming them, dining with them, going long journeys 
with them to visit those who could not come to him, 
inquiring into their personal needs and sufferings, 
turning away from no service however humble, spend- 
ing himself, his love, his time, his energy, as if he 
had nothing else to do. And the world has recognized 
this element of his greatness, and it would rather lose 
almost any other memory that it possesses than the 
memory of Jesus Christ surrounded by the miserable, 
always patient, always gentle and hopeful, always 
offering his power to our mortal weakness. When this 
aspect of Jesus' life suffered an eclipse, and these divine 
acts were relegated by an unbelieving generation to the 
realm of myth and fancy, his whole personality suffered 
an eclipse, and when the absolute naturalness, truth, 
and reality of this great ministry of Christ was re- 
established — and in this work Emmanuel Church has 
humbly taken part — the character of Christ revealed 
itself to men as it has not done for ages. 

It is not merely that a certain number of sick folk 
were healed. Probably a greater number are restored 
to health from just as desperate diseases in one of our 
great hospitals every year. It is not that we look 
upon these acts as the signs or credentials of the truth 

77 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

or authority of his teaching, which he himself never 
did, but that in these scenes we discern a life worthy of 
the Son of God, a picture of man's faith and need on the 
one side, and of Jesus 5 love and power on the other, 
which is the most sacred thing this world possesses. 
And on his side, without this intimate contact with 
life, without his knowledge of every phase of human 
nature, would he have been what he was? Does any 
one suppose that his sayings, made of the very texture of 
human life, would have occurred to a lonely student 
who withdraws from the world in order that he may 
ponder his thoughts in solitude? What gives its 
timeless and eternal character to Christ's teaching is 
that it is spun out of human life, the one thing that 
never grows old. What gave him his absolute origi- 
nality and enabled him to escape from all the dreary 
verbiage of Jewish lore is that he derived truth directly 
from God and from contact with men and women, 
not from reading other people's ideas in books. At no 
time of his life, no matter how great the present duty, 
no matter how hard destiny pressed on him, was he too 
preoccupied to stop, to ask who touched him, to dismiss 
his own purpose and anxieties in order that he might 
give himself wholly to the man or woman who needed 
him. 

Once he was going through Jericho. He was on his 
way to Jerusalem, so grave and sorrowful as he re- 
volved in his mind the great issues of life and death 
which were closing around him that, we read, even the 
Disciples, as they followed him on the way, were afraid. 

78 



CHRIST'S LOVE FOR INDIVIDUALS 

It was a critical moment when, if ever, Jesus might feel 
himself excused from all external interruption. Sud- 
denly from out the vast crowd that surrounded him 
there rang a doleful cry, "Jesus, thou son of David, 
have mercy on me." This time the Disciples were 
scandalized. It was another of those sick people! 
They looked and were relieved. It was only the old 
blind beggar who had sat at the gate of the city for 
years. Him, at least, they could dispose of. "And 
they commanded him to hold his peace." Jesus also 
had heard the sufferer's appeal, and he stood still and 
commanded that he should be brought unto him. 
And when he saw the man with the sightless orbs he 
said, "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" 
And he said, "Lord, that I may receive my sight." 
"Receive thy sight," said Jesus, "thy faith hath saved 
thee." 

Yes, faith had not deceived blind Bartimaeus that 
day. It led him to spring up and press forward through 
the crowd in his helpless darkness. It led him to cry 
out to Jesus and to resist those who would have held 
him back. He had heard the noise of the passing 
multitude, and he had asked what it meant. "And 
they said unto him, Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." 
So he came. Perhaps a voice told him that if he was 
not saved then he would never be saved. If so, it told 
him truly. For when Jesus passed out of Jericho that 
morning it was never to re-enter it. For him it was the 
last time. In a few days those feet that had gone 
about doing good, those hands which had given life 

79 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

and health to so many, would be nailed to the cross. 
But Bartimaeus came, and Jesus cast aside his own 
grief and fearful preoccupation and gave him sight. 
He would not pass by a blind man who cried out to 
him for help and leave him blind. 

And even on the cross in the midst of his own tor- 
ment he heard another voice lifted in supplication to 
him. It was humanity's last appeal to Jesus in the 
person of a crucified thief who somewhere in the old 
days of Galilee on the outskirts of some crowd had 
heard him speak of the Kingdom of God, and who 
ventured to offer his humble, deprecating request. 
This day they two had been side by side, companions 
in suffering. Jesus had seen him, and he longs that 
Jesus shall not forget him: "Lord, remember me when 
thou comest into thy Kingdom." Instantly he who 
had kept silence so long, and who had no word to 
answer to the infinitude of abuse which had been 
heaped on his head, replies, "This day thou shalt be 
with me in Paradise." With this last trophy of his 
grace, "like a single flower in the hand of a dead man," 
Jesus enters the vast spaces of the nether world. 

Is not this the disposition, are not these the very 
acts that made Jesus the Saviour of the World? I do 
not mean merely contact with the few classical figures 
of the New Testament, but that Christ's disposition 
toward them has drawn to him unnumbered thousands 
of suffering, weak, tempted, afflicted men and women 
through the ages who through him have found rest 
unto their souls. 

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CHRIST'S LOVE FOR INDIVIDUALS 

For this is our feeling for those who have succeeded 
in awakening our faith and in kindling our enthusiasm. 
We want to get near them, we want to touch them. 
What we hear of them interests us, their words inspire 
us. But before we will give ourselves to them we must 
put them to the supreme test of submitting our per- 
sonal problem to them, of letting their life touch our 
life. The wise and thoughtful book, the penetrating 
charm of the poem, the rich experience of the sermon, 
touches us profoundly. It already inspires us with a 
kind of faith. That man, we say, at some time in his 
life has known my grief, he has carried my burden; 
he has found peace, perhaps he can help me to find it. 
The book, the sermon, the poem, cannot save me; 
the man might. 

This, you feel, is the supreme test of his mission. 
So you draw near to him and touch him. Perhaps he 
knows it and gives himself to you as if he had nothing 
else to live for. Perhaps he knows it not, but goes on 
writing new books, singing new songs, preaching new 
sermons, all unconscious of your personal life and yet 
ministering to it, and laying bare, as he does so, the 
richness or the poverty, the tenderness or the coarse- 
ness of his own soul. This you soon perceive. You 
have come near to the real man. You know him now. 
Nothing that he could say or do could surprise you 
much. And as you look back on the gifts he has given 
you — profounder views of God and the soul, serener 
courage, higher perceptions of the possibilities of life — 
you cannot refer them to this utterance of his or to that, 

6 81 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

but rather to his example, the impression which his 
soul, unselfish and true in all its relations, has made on 
your soul. 

Only a very great and sincere man can impress us 
in this way, and this is the supreme service such men 
render their fellows — they help others to be great. 
We feel this acutely. We suspect that most of our 
heroes are half unreal. We dare not put them to that 
supreme test. We do not wish to come too near to 
them. We would rather take them for what they give 
themselves out to be than to prove them for ourselves. 
They may amuse us; they may instruct us. We do not 
expect them to save us, and they could not do it if they 
tried. That is the penalty we all pay for our insincerity 
and our selfishness. It makes us so helpless. We look 
very respectable and very fine marching along with the 
multitude, intent on our own business, going to do some 
good work. But let some poor, tempted, sorrowful, 
despairing human being come to us and touch us un- 
awares, and no virtue goes out of us ; he goes away poorer 
and sadder than he came. It is only Jesus out of whom 
virtue always flowed. It is only he who understood 
every type of character, every form of temptation, ev- 
ery depth of human sorrow, and it is only from him 
that we can have this divine disposition. Without his 
grand, unifying principle such a constant turning aside 
from what we regard as the real business of life would 
be disastrous. He has taught us that the one thing 
needful is love. The world wall say, as it has always 
said, that by letting ourselves go out in so many 

82 



CHRIST'S LOVE FOR INDIVIDUALS 

directions we fritter away our power and lose that 
singleness of aim which is so important. He has 
shown us how such a disposition infinitely enriches 
life, because one great purpose runs through it. "He 
that seeketh to save his life shall lose it." By enter- 
ing deeply the life of another we do not lose our own life; 
we find it. By giving ourselves to a great cause we do 
not sink our own personality; we acquire a higher, 
mightier personality. But above all causes, above all 
other pursuits and occupations, is the precious privilege 
of serving humanity, of succoring men and women, of 
loving our friends and counseling them aright. This 
is our real business in life, did we but know it. Our 
wealth and position, our culture and knowledge, are but 
means to this end. 

And how many there are, coming to us when we do 
not know it and touching us when we do not expect it ! 
Yet we discern the touch of faith. How many there 
are who sound our hearts by a sigh, a light word, a 
trifling appeal, and who go away richer or poorer by 
virtue of what they have found in us! Jesus did all 
things well. He has accomplished as much indirectly 
and unconsciously as he has accomplished consciously. 
To be loved as he has been loved he must have been 
infinitely lovable. Yet even he said, "For their sakes 
I sanctify myself." Let us think of that when we are 
tempted to be false, to be cruel, to be heartless. It is 
worth while to be otherwise for the sake of those who 
look to us, who are good because we are good, and who 
believe because we believe. Yes, Christ knew that 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

"for their sakes" many a man would do what he would 
not do for himself. 

Only a shelter for my head I sought 

One stormy winter's night. 
To me the blessing of my life was brought, 

Turning the whole world bright. 
How can I thank Thee for a gift so sweet, 

O dearest Heavenly Friend? 
I sought a resting-place for weary feet 

And found my journey's end. 

Only the latchet of a friendly door 

My timid fingers tried. 
A loving heart, with all its precious store, 

To me was opened wide. 
I sought for refuge from a passing shower, 

My sun shall always shine. 
I would have sat beside the hearth an hour, 

And thy whole heart was mine. 1 

— Ruckert. 

1 Translated by James Freeman Clarke. 



II 

THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN 

The Son of Man hath power upon earth to forgive sins. — St. Luke v: 24. 

THE scene from which these words are taken is 
very familiar. A man suffering from some form 
of paralysis had been brought to Jesus to be healed. 
Instead of concerning himself with the man's physical 
symptoms, Jesus, either as the result of conversation 
with the sick man or because the disease itself suggested 
it, offered relief to his conscience. "Son/ 5 said he, 
kindly and affectionately, "thy sins be forgiven thee." 
The Scribes and Pharisees began to murmur. They 
had been balked of the pleasure of seeing a miracle 
performed, and the words which Jesus had uttered 
seemed to them blasphemous. In reply Jesus said: 
"What reason ye in your hearts? For whether is easier 
to say, thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, rise up 
and walk?" I have often wondered which Jesus con- 
sidered easier. He did not explain, but I believe he 
meant that to him it was easier to say to a paralytic 
"Arise and walk" than to bring peace to his con- 
science and give him the conviction that his sin was 
forgiven. 

85 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

"The Son of Man hath power upon earth to forgive 
sins." Probably it is his greatest power, a power that 
will never die. It is a power which has brought to him 
thousands upon thousands of men and women who 
would have come for no other reason, who have asked 
not health nor escape from the consequences of their 
own acts, but deliverance from the haunting sense of 
guilt, and an assurance of forgiveness. It is useless to 
cry out against the desire of the human heart for con- 
fession and absolution, for in spite of all denunciations 
it is and will be sought by men forever. The instinct 
is one thing; the institution provided to satisfy it is 
another. Confession is like any other human institu- 
tion that contains abuses — like Christian Science, for 
example. Merely to denounce it and to ridicule it only 
strengthens it. Men do not seek either on account of 
its errors or abuses, but on account of its truth and its 
strength, and if we would avoid its abuses we must 
recognize its truth and employ its means of help without 
countenancing its errors. It is an abuse of confession 
and absolution to teach that by them we escape the 
consequences of our own acts. It is an abuse of them 
to teach that the power of forgiving sins is confined 
to one order of men called priests. It is an exaggera- 
tion and an abuse to teach that confession and absolu- 
tion are frequently necessary to all persons at all times 
as a mere routine of the Christian life. It is a dangerous 
abuse to rob a human soul of its independence and 
moral responsibility and to commit these inalienable 
prerogatives to another. It is an abuse to demand the 

86 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN 

same experience of sudden spiritual awakening and 
conversion of all men, for many men are incapable of it. 

The truth and the need which we can never eradicate 
consist in the fact that at times the burden of sin and 
guilt and sorrow of the human heart cries for expression, 
just as its loneliness cries for companionship. There 
is something in the unutterable loneliness of guilt that 
men cannot bear, and they prefer to confess even at the 
risk of their lives. A man once confessed to me an un- 
provoked murder of which he had never been suspected, 
and I asked him why he had done so dangerous a thing 
without even claiming the sanctity of the confessional. 
He replied: "I am taking my chances. I care little if 
you denounce me and give me up. That is for you to 
decide. What I want to know is, is it possible for me 
to be forgiven? I cannot resist the Spirit of God any 
longer." 

A short time ago I saw a man in a distant city who 
has given concern to many experienced physicians. 
He was apparently paralyzed on one side of his body, 
and undoubtedly would have been diagnosed by St. 
Luke as a man sick of the palsy. He informed me that 
his paralysis was not what troubled him, but the fact 
that he was not reconciled to God. "Assure me that 
I am forgiven," he said; "give me a reason for living, 
and then you may say to me, Rise up and walk, and I 
shall obey you." The result was as he anticipated. 

I know that men are differently constituted in this 
respect, and also that their disposition appears to de- 
pend but little on the gravity of their offenses. Many 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

persons whose sins are heavy and serious apparently 
are but little affected by them, while others suffer 
intolerable anguish for what we might regard as very 
venial offenses. These are they whom William James 
has called "the unhealthy-minded." I have never 
liked the name; but by whatever name we call them, 
they form a large and important part of humanity. 
The greatest of the Psalmists were men of this type, and 
in their sense of sin they struck the deepest note of the 
Old Testament. St. Paul must have been such a man, 
for he cried: "Wretched man that I am. Who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death?" Augustine, 
with his fierce struggles and his divided will, belonged to 
this family of God's children. Martin Luther, with 
all his robustness of mind, was one of them. And in 
modern times there is Count Tolstoy, who, while 
possessing all that the world could give him, erected 
a gallows in his library to hang himself, simply because 
he found a life without God intolerable. 

The reason why men of the first type I have men- 
tioned are not more concerned for their sins is that they 
are not deeply conscious of them in the sense that they 
do not feel that evil is wrecking their personality. 
Their life still retains much of its inward unity and 
purpose. They are conscious that the core and center 
of their life is sound, and they regard sin as something 
alien and superficial. They ascribe it to inherited tend- 
encies, to temporary conditions and external tempta- 
tions for which they feel little sorrow or responsibility, 

and they hope to escape it little by little. What dis- 
ss 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN 

tinguishes the others, however, is their profound sense of 
duality. They are drawn in different directions. They 
have ideals * which they cannot realize. Whether their 
sins seem little or great to others, they are conscious 
of a cleft which runs to the depth of their being and 
which threatens the integrity of their personality. 
Other men may not be troubled by their sins, but they 
are. To them sin is a dreadful reality of life. They 
look back and see how evil committed long ago has cast 
its gloom and bondage over their existence and over 
the lives of others. There is a horror of thick darkness 
over their souls, a sense of woe and guilt from which 
they hope to be free. What they ask of religion is 
chiefly redemption and escape. What they desire is 
liberty, "a life not correlated with death," a peace 
which depends on unity of will and conscience, not on 
fluctuating events; and before that gulf will close, 
something great and precious must be cast into it — the 
sacrifice of a troubled spirit, a surrender to God. Some- 
thing must die and pass away. The old dark, evil, 
mocking self must perish, that the new man may be 
born. It is as if two abysses, the abyss that saves and 
the abyss that destroys, were struggling within them, 
and that one must prevail. A woman once said to me, 
"Who could guess that the mind has so many doors 
that open directly into hell?" 



1 1 believe that men capable of undergoing the sudden and profound 
change of genuine "conversion" invariably present symptoms of disso- 
ciation. The conversion consists in the suppression of one personality and 
the liberation of another. 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

There is no question that such persons offer the 
deepest challenge to religion. Defiant of religion, 
deaf to it as they often appear, they are the persons 
who need it most and who can make the noblest use 
of it. It was the perception of this that caused Jesus 
to love sinners as he did. Whether these persons are 
the present slaves of passion and of habit or are 
victims of remorse for the past, they have the first 
claim on a religion which calls itself the Religion of 
Humanity. Jesus during his lifetime was continually 
beset by them. Whether they were called demoniacs 
or publicans and sinners, he had them ever in his heart, 
saying, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save 
the lost." "They that are whole need not a physician, 
but they that are sick." Can the religion of Christ 
help them? If not, it is for some, but not for all. It is 
for them that need it least, not for them that need it 
most. It may be useful and beautiful as an adjunct 
to life's blessings, but it cannot save, it cannot deliver, 
nor turn life's curse into blessing. (William James.) 

Let me say, then, that thousands of such men and 
women have found a peace and happiness of which 
ordinary contented Christians know nothing. They 
have risen to heights of heroism and virtue far above 
the natural and negative goodness of those who have 
never fallen. They are the saints and heroes of the 
Kingdom of God. "These are they which have come 
out of great tribulation and have washed their robes 
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 
And, having been converted themselves, they have 

90 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN 

mightily strengthened their brethren, for they know all 
the pitfalls of human life. They have touched all our 
sorrows and can sympathize with every weakness of the 
human heart. 

What can such men and women carry with them into 
the Kingdom of Heaven? They cannot carry inno- 
cence. They cannot carry a pure, unsullied heart that 
has been Christ's always. This is forever beyond their 
power. But there is one gift they can bring without 
which Heaven would be poorer — their experience. I 
do not mean the knowledge of their guilt and crimes, 
which has no place in the Kingdom of Christ, but the 
knowledge of God's love, which would not let them go; 
the memory of the miracle of grace which delivered 
them; the consciousness of God's forgiveness and 
goodness, which waited so patiently, which received so 
graciously, which saved so mightily. This they have, 
and no power in earth or hell can take it from them. 
They know the deepest, tenderest side of God which 
can be revealed to man. There is something perfectly 
natural and unaffected in Christ's love of sinners. 
He loved them for what he saw in them. Though he 
never contrasted them with the pure and true of heart, 
he did contrast them with the contented and self- 
righteous, to the latter's great detriment. Heavily as 
the problem of evil presses on human life, it receives 
light here. Men who have wandered into it and have 
been overtaken by it and have escaped from it are 
often gentler, deeper, purer, more generous than they 
were before. They have a gratitude toward God 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

which the unfallen can hardly feel. Between their sin 
and its reward stands the memory of their wonderful 
experience. 

The other day in a friend's library I saw a splendid 
engraving of Napoleon Bonaparte made a few years 
before his death. On the opposite wall hung a fine 
representation of the head of the Apollo Belvedere — 
one the symbol of perfect, flawless, youthful beauty, the 
other the face of a man in whom the human race seems 
to epitomize itself. One glances with pleasure and 
admiration at the untroubled, unsullied face of the god; 
but how quickly one's glance returns to the troubled 
face of the man, to the marvel of intellect and ambition 
domed in that vast forehead, the profound meditation 
and melancholy of the eye, the implacable firmness 
and constancy of mouth and chin, the colossal force of 
that compact head and form! In the one, changeless, 
deathless beauty; in the other, the power of thought, 
the sharp chiseling of sorrow and experience, the might 
of intellect, the fate of nations, indomitable energy of 
will, a power capable of shaking the world out of its 
course. The one delights us, but in the presence of the 
other life itself is unrolled before us. 

"The Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive 
sins." To-day one should not comment on these words 
without explaining that the expression "The Son of 
Man" here probably means no more than "man." 
Scholars know this, but they have hesitated to draw the 
inference and to restore to this mighty text its true 
meaning. Man hath power on earth to forgive sin, 

92 



THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN 

not merely sin against himself, but sin against God. 
Man hath power on earth to forgive sin, and perhaps 
that power is not limited to this earth, but possesses an 
eternal validity. "Whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
earth shalt be loosed in Heaven" is a promise not ad- 
dressed to one man, nor to one order of men. When 
a man actuated by a spirit of love, guided by the light 
of conscience and the revealed will of God, pronounces 
another forgiven, according to the word of Christ 
Jesus, he expresses the will of God, and the sinner is 
forgiven; and that is what so many desire — to reveal 
their soul to another, that he may know them for what 
they are, and to have the word of absolution spoken 
with conviction by human lips. No form is necessary. 
No caste or order of men is necessary. Any man who 
believes in a God of Love, in a God who hears prayer and 
is touched by human penitence and sorrow, may say 
to any other who truly repents, "Thou art forgiven, 
and by the authority committed unto me by Jesus 
Christ I absolve thee from all thy sins." 



Ill 



FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES 

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good 
to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitef ully use you, and 
persecute you; 

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven : for he 
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the 
just and on the unjust. — St. Matthew v: 44, 45. 

I SUPPOSE this may be reckoned as the greatest 
and most characteristic saying of Christ. In his 
doctrine of the forgiveness of injuries Jesus broke most 
radically with the morality of this world and showed 
most plainly the nature of his salvation. We recognize 
this, and when we say a person has a Christian dispo- 
sition we usually mean that he has a forgiving disposi- 
tion. A great many of Christ's other sayings have their 
counterparts in the moral codes of mankind, but, with a 
single exception, this one stands alone. Other virtues 
which Christ recognized — purity, integrity of heart, and 
love for our fellow-men — the heathen world also rec- 
ognized, and those persons who practised them were 
regarded with admiration; but the duty of unlimited 
forgiveness they did not recognize as a virtue. Had 
it been proposed to them they would have indignantly 
rejected it. The Assyrian sculptors, and sometimes the 

94 



FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES 

Egyptian, knew no more delicate form of flattery than to 
represent their conquering kings in the very act of 
inflicting the most horrible sufferings on their con- 
quered enemies. People not merely did not forgive 
their enemies; they did not think they ought to do so. 
A man regarded himself as fortunate if he could say on 
his death-bed that he had done as much harm to his 
enemies as he had done good to his friends. 

Nor can we find this doctrine taught in the Old 
Testament. The Old Testament writers were little if 
at all higher than the heathen in this respect. This 
was one of the places where Jesus was obliged abso- 
lutely to reject the spirit and teaching of the religion 
he honored so highly. "Ye have heard that it was 
said by them of old times, an eye for an eye, and a 
tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, resist not evil, 
but if a man smite you on one cheek turn to him the 
other also. If he sue you at the law and take away 
your coat, give him your cloak. If he compel you 
to go with him one mile, go with him twain." 

The one great teacher, as far as I know, who agreed 
with Jesus on this matter and who taught it in- 
dependently was Gautama Buddha, and it is not 
without significance that the two greatest religious 
teachers who have blessed this earth should have 
enunciated independently the duty of absolute for- 
giveness. Christianity has no injunctions on this 
point stricter than those which Buddha laid on his 
disciples: "Though an enemy should cut your body 
bit by bit, yet let not a thought of anger or of resent - 

95 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

ment arise in your heart." "Nothing so full of vic- 
tory as patience." Most characteristic is this saying: 
"Though a wicked man foolishly do me harm, I will re- 
turn to him the protection of my ungrudging love. 
The more evil comes from him, the more good shall go 
from me; the reward of my good deeds always re- 
turning to me, the poison of the slanderer's words al- 
ways returning to him." Noble as these expressions 
are, and fully as their author lived up to them, it is 
plain that the motive which lay behind them was very 
different from the motive of Jesus. With Buddha it is 
but the law of cause and effect in the spiritual world, 
the harm that hating does the hater. He did not lay 
on his disciples the duty of forgiveness because God is 
love, or that they might be the children of their Father 
in Heaven or because the offender is a brother, but 
that they might avoid the sorrow and the injury that 
hatred inflicts. The doctrine of Jesus, therefore, in its 
essence stands alone, and it is the very heart of all his 
teachings. It is a command which the great majority of 
those who call themselves Christians not only do not 
obey, but which they do not even treat seriously. 
"The Sermon on the Mount stands worthy of its name 
as an ideal and a dream of the most exalted thinker in 
his most exalted mood, but which no one thinks of 
putting into practice." It is the charter of our modern 
civilization, from which whatever claim we have to 
civilization springs, but which civilization contemptu- 
ously tramples under foot. Only yesterday the Ger- 
man Emperor declared that if any officer of the army or 

96 



FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES 

navy refused to seek the life of a brother officer of his 
own nationality in a duel on the ground that his religion 
forbade it he should be cashiered from the service. 
Yet popular sentiment is not unanimous on that point, 
for when this injunction was promulgated in the 
Reichstag it was greeted with groans and hisses, not 
merely by Protestants and Catholics, but by Jews and 
Socialists. 

In the nineteenth century one eminent man, Count 
Leo Tolstoy, literally accepted this saying of Jesus, 
which he found plainly written in the New Testament. 
He accepted it and for years he strove to practise it, 
and he suffered much. He was shunned by his friends, 
he was regarded as a fanatic, he was excommunica- 
ted by his Church and was buried in unconsecrated 
ground. But he wielded the greatest moral influence 
of our times, and he left an impression which was that 
of a Hebrew prophet rather than that of a modern man. 
And he has gained this glorious reward, that wherever 
Christ's doctrine of forgiveness is preached throughout 
the world the name of Tolstoy shall be mentioned as a 
memorial unto him. 

How are we to regard this command of Jesus? Is it 
the weakest thing in his religion, which ever closes it in 
its entirety to high-minded men? Or is it the strongest 
thing, in which Christ most fully expresses his own dis- 
position and his life? It must be one or the other; and 
until we see clearly that forgiveness is the strongest 
thing and the wisest thing for us to practise we shall 
never practise it, because it makes such enormous 
7 97 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

demands upon our human nature, and because it is in 
direct opposition to about one-half of the impulses of 
our hearts. 

Let us ask, then, why Jesus demanded it. He de- 
manded it primarily because it was his own inflexible 
rule of life. For there is one experience of human life to 
which Jesus was a complete stranger, one emotion 
common to us which he never knew. That is the 
emotion of hatred and revenge. Jesus never hated. 
He opposed evil resolutely. He unmasked it, he de- 
nounced it, but he did not hate the evil-doer. One of 
the most extraordinary traits of his character was his 
perfectly natural and unaffected love of sinners. His 
feeling for them was a feeling of affection and kindness, 
of pity and the desire to save. If this had been with 
him a mere matter of words we should have doubted it, 
because it would seem too wonderful to be true. But 
the whole content of his soul was laid bare on the Cross. 
There his heart spoke, his life spoke; and if there had 
been any hatred or bitterness lurking in them it would 
have spoken also. But the Cross only brought to light 
new depths of love, prayers for the forgiveness of his 
enemies, promise of victory on earth and of entrance 
into Heaven. Whatever victory Jesus won he won 
through love. Whatever salvation and new life for 
man he has given us, he has given us through love. 
That is the final, the supreme difference between Jesus 
and other men. He alone dared trust love absolutely, 
so absolutely as to refuse to give hatred any place at 
all in his own life or in the lives of his followers. We 



FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES 

have, at all events, reached a point of spiritual develop- 
ment and enlightenment where we can perceive some 
flashes of truth in this principle. Humanity has en- 
throned him as the visible, perfect Image of God. It 
has accepted him as its highest representative. It 
would not have his life other than it was. And, for our 
part, we know that whatever blessing has come to us 
has come through love. It is not mountains and plains 
and rivers and food and clothing that make the world 
for us. It is men and women and little children that 
make the world when they come, and that end the 
world for us when they go. So far as we have loved we 
have been blessed, and so far as we have hated we have 
been cursed. 

But, it may be said, there is the great difficulty. 
Love and hatred cannot be so easily separated from 
each other. Love is pitiless. Love erects absolute 
ideals and makes inexorable demands, and when those 
ideals are shattered and those demands dishonored it 
turns to hatred and bitterness. Beside the bright 
image of Love stalks the dark image of Jealousy and 
Suspicion, as shadow follows substance. The brighter 
the image of light the darker the shadow. So it is 
said, "Jealousy is the shadow cast by love when 
something intervenes between it and its object." 
The injuries we find it the hardest to forgive are not the 
affronts put upon us by strangers. They are not the 
opposition to our plans and purposes we must en- 
counter from the world. They are the wounds where- 
with we are wounded in the house of our friends. 

99 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

They are the disloyalty of those on whose loyalty we 
counted as we count on our own soul. They are the 
failures to meet our needs and to understand our sor- 
rows on the part of those to whom we had the right to 
look for help and support. They are the disillusions, 
the blank disappointments, the unkindnesses, which 
rob us of our hope and which undermine the very 
foundation of our life by destroying our trust. Yes, 
love is a terrible thing, and he who appeals to it must 
abide by it. Buddha saw that and drew back. "De- 
spair," said he, "is the child of hope, and hatred is the 
child of love. Therefore neither hope nor love." Jesus 
saw it and pressed on, because he saw that love is the 
very nature of God, and therefore infinite. "In God 
there is nothing finite, in God there is nothing temporal. 
In God there is nothing that inclines toward death." 
Love is not bounded by hatred. There is love beyond 
love. Beyond the first mere passion, which is scarcely 
more than an animal instinct, is strong love, unselfish 
love, love victorious over death. Beyond love that is 
all-personal, all-demanding, is love that asks only the 
privilege of loving and serving. Beyond blind love, 
which moves in its wonderful world of illusion, is love 
which dares to behold reality with open eyes. Beyond 
jealous love, inexorable love, pitiless love, is forgiving, 
saving love. Beyond all human love is Divine love. 
Beyond the love of men and women is the love of 
Jesus Christ. 

Can we imagine that the love of Jesus was not be- 
trayed, that it suffered no disillusion and no shocking, 

100 



FORGIVENESS OF INJURIES 

dreadful surprise? He loved men, and he heard them 
prefer Barabbas and clamor that he be nailed to a 
cross. He loved his disciples, and when he needed 
them they forsook him. He loved Simon Peter and was 
proud of him and called him a Rock, and Peter denied 
him with an oath and a curse. But Jesus' love was not 
shaken. All the hatred of the world could not turn 
his heart's love into gall. He loved them still, and 
prayed for them and made excuses for their weakness. 
He did not taunt and reproach Peter for his infamous 
cowardice any more than he reproached Mary Magda- 
lene for her seven devils. He looked into his eyes 
with affection. He took him by the hand. He re- 
stored him to his office. He forgave him and bade him 
feed his sheep. 

And can our life go on without forgiveness? Is there 
a human being who has had much to do with us who has 
not much to forgive in us? Can we lay a loved one 
in the grave without longing for forgiveness for our 
innumerable failures and our innumerable misdeeds? 
Is not that always our bitterest thought — that we have 
done so little to make the one we really loved happy and 
so much to make him unhappy? And what we so 
greatly need ourselves can we refuse freely to give to 
others? Never without still sharper pangs. Never 
without separating ourselves from Jesus Christ and 
jeopardizing our own chance of forgiveness. When 
we begin to hate, then we know what suffering really 
is, and if in our blind resentment we succeed in in- 
flicting injury or ruin on him we thought we hated, 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

then we begin to hate ourselves. "A human life, how 
small a thing to take! how vast a thing to employ!" 

There is so much that is final in human life, so much 
that is tragic and inexorable, we may thank our God on 
bended knees that the way to hope can always be 
opened and the door to life's darkest sorrow and its 
most everlasting regret can be closed with the words: 
"I forgive you. I love you." Nothing but love can 
save us. Nothing but hatred can destroy us. 






IV 

GETHSEMANE 

And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and 
take your rest; it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of Man is 
betrayed into the hands of sinners. $ 

Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betray eth me is at hand. 

—St. Mark xiv:41, 42. 

IT is with awe and trembling that we contemplate 
the last scene in Jesus' life, which we associate 
with the Garden of Gethsemane. Holy and precious is 
each one of our Saviour's last steps on earth, but this is 
most holy and precious. To Christians, after the hill 
of Calvary, Gethsemane, which saw the deepest humili- 
ation of the Son of Man, is the most sacred spot on 
earth, a spot which faith still strives to identify. Even 
to this day that garden is pointed out on the Mount of 
Olives. Last night it swam in the pale glory of the 
paschal moon or was obscured by clouds like those which 
shrouded Jesus' soul. The stones still lie scattered 
here and there on which the disciples rested while 
Jesus went to and fro in prayerful agony. Almost 
circle wise stand eight venerable olive-trees whose age 
the believing eye prolongs back and back even to the 
days of the Son of Man. 

In that garden took place the mysterious conflict 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

which we shall never understand until we are more like 
Jesus. The older Gospels have not hesitated to paint 
for us in sympathetic yet thoroughly human colors the 
death-struggle of the Lord, the prostrate figure, the 
sweat of blood, even the agonized prayer to God for the 
removal, or at least the mitigation, of his sufferings. 
Only St. John, true to his general purpose, has sup- 
pressed all these genuinely human traits of weakness. 
He represents Jesus as calm, powerful, free from all 
fear and despondency. "Peace I leave with you, my 
peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth give 
I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither 
let it be afraid/ 5 The last hour finds Jesus not pros- 
trate on the earth, but erect in all his Godlike power. 
"I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to 
take it again." "Be of good cheer, I have overcome 
the world." It is the traitor and the soldiers who fall 
prostrate. Not a doubt presents itself to his mind. 
Not a prayer rises to God for the removal of the cup of 
his agony. "The cup my Father hath given me, shall 
I not drink it?" "The Prince of this world cometh 
and hath nothing in me." 

This picture, though at variance with the old and 
doubtless correct synoptic tradition, like all John's 
spiritual estimates of Jesus, contains a profound truth. 
It shows us the lofty resolution, the unbroken peace of 
mind, with which Jesus actually met his death. It 
does not tell us how he attained that peace. The older 
Gospels, however, tell us that He found it, as we may 
find it, amid sorrow and anguish we dare not say are 

104 



GETHSEMANE 

greater than his. He found it in prayer to God, in the 
thought that all is ordered by the Father's will, that, 
dark as the way appeared, fiercely as his human nature 
shrank from it, he would walk in it because God had 
shown him that it was the way of salvation. 

And now I wish to compare Jesus' behavior with 
that of his disciples. For he did not go into that 
garden alone; he took with him his three oldest and 
most trusted friends, and them only. Why did he take 
them? Partly from that longing for human compan- 
ionship and sympathy which even the greatest hearts 
have felt in moments of sorrow and deep despondency. 
Partly that they might be near him, because he would 
know God's will for them and help to prepare them for 
the fearful experiences which were about to come to 
them. He could not endure the presence even of the 
twelve at this awful moment, but he wanted those who 
were nearest to him. So we read: "He taketh with 
him Peter and James and John and began to be sore 
amazed and very heavy, and saith unto them, My soul 
is exceeding sorrowful unto death. Tarry ye here and 
watch. And he went forward a little, and fell on the 
ground, and prayed that if it were possible the hour 
might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, 
all things are possible unto Thee. Take away this 
cup from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what 
Thou wilt. And he cometh and findeth them sleeping 
and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? Couldst 
thou not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray 
lest ye enter into temptation." Then, with divine 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

sweetness, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh 
is weak." Disappointed, he withdrew unto himself. 
Then, driven back by the need of human help and 
sympathy, he returned "and found them sleeping, for 
their eyes were heavy. Neither wist they what to 
answer him. And he cometh the third time and saith 
unto them, Sleep on now and take your rest; it is 
enough. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands 
of sinners. Rise up, let us go. Behold, he that be- 
trayeth me is at hand." 

How full of lessons and of warning this story is! 
First, the need of human help and sympathy of those 
who are bearing great burdens and going through deep 
waters. At such times the heart of the strongest 
longs for support, at least for comprehension of what it 
suffers. Men turn naturally to those they love, looking 
for sympathy and for willingness to help them bear 
their anguish. And how seldom do they find it! 
How many friends we seem to have when we do not 
need them ! How few when we have to put them to the 
proof! If Jesus had turned to the women who loved 
him and to whom he had given new life, at this hour 
they would not have slept, they would not have failed 
him. At all events, a day or two later, when he looked 
down from the height of his throne, his cross, searching 
the faces of the multitude for one friendly countenance, 
the only faces he saw turned toward him with affection 
were the faces of the women who followed him afar 
off. And if he reflected on the future of his religion 
he must have realized that woman's loyalty and 

106 



GETHSEMANE 

devotion was the rock on which his Church should 
rise. 

And, most pathetic of all, his disciples failed him, 
not because they did not love him, but because they 
were so blind. In after years they were never tired 
of recounting their Master's heroic victory. But now 
they did not know there was a struggle. They had 
had a hard, exciting day; they were tired and wanted 
sleep. So they left Jesus to prepare for death alone. 

Nor did Jesus take his disciples with him merely 
because he desired their company. He took them to 
prepare them for what was in store for them even as he 
prepared himself. The future was still obscure. It 
did not yet appear whether Jesus must suffer alone or 
whether the disciples must suffer with him. Perhaps 
his prayers and anguish were for them more than for 
himself. He knew, however, that in either case a fear- 
ful ordeal was in store for them. He foresaw the im- 
pending catastrophe, and he prepared to meet it with 
eyes wide open. It is true his human nature shuddered 
and his human will quailed in Gethsemane, but he 
fought the battle out before God. He conquered fear, 
and from that time onward, through all the fearful 
scenes of his betrayal, arrest, trial, mocking, torture, and 
crucifixion he shrank not and quailed not, but looked 
down upon his foes from the immeasurable height of his 
refuge in God. 

Fortunately for his disciples, they were put to no 
such trial, for they were utterly unprepared for it, and 
even in the comparatively easy role they had to play 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

they miserably failed. Peter, after promising to go 
with his Master to prison and to death, trembled before 
the pitiful temple guard and denied all knowledge of 
the man, and he was totally invisible on the day of 
crucifixion. They were not prepared. They had let 
the opportunity slip. When they might have armed 
themselves with Jesus' courage, they slept, and when 
the storm burst they were swept away. The great 
event of their life came and they failed to meet it. So 
Jesus, coming to them the third time and finding them 
asleep, said to them, not without bitterness, "Sleep on 
now and take your rest." The opportunity is past, the 
time of preparation is ended. So far as I am con- 
cerned, you may sleep forever. "Sleep on and take 
your rest." You cannot help me now by watching. 
You cannot help yourselves. The hour for that is 
gone. Now the event must prove you. The time of 
preparation is over. The time of action is at hand. 
"Rise up, let us be going." Let us see how you and I 
will meet our fate. 

We know how they met it. Jesus rising above the 
wonderful height of his own past to become the cen- 
tral and inviolable figure of humanity, the one perfect 
example of Godlike self-forgetfulness in human life; 
and they confused, bewildered, terrified, to sink be- 
neath their own manhood, to fall from Jesus, the more 
despicably because of the example he had set them. 
This is what Robertson has called the Irrevocable Past. 
O human nature, so great and so little, so marvelous 
in thy calm courage and self-sacrifice when lifted up by 

108 



GETHSEMANE 

a great thought and sustained by a mighty purpose, so 
base and contemptible when taken by surprise and 
dominated by fear! In every event of life how wholly 
are we at the mercy of our own past! The great op- 
portunity only proves what is in us. It does not supply 
what is not there. When a man challenged by some 
sudden emergency rises instantly to meet it, forgets 
himself, sacrifices his life to save another's, that di- 
vine self-f orgetf ulness was not created at that moment 
within his heart. It had long slumbered there, though 
he may not have known it. It had been formed by 
many a little act of courage and unselfishness. When a 
character suddenly crumbles and exhibits an unexpected 
and deplorable weakness, we may be sure before the 
great defeat came many lesser defeats had under- 
mined its foundation and prepared the way for the final 
fall. "He that is faithful in the least is faithful also 
in much." 

That is the real difference between great men and 
little men, between the men who truly succeed and the 
men who truly fail in life. To the first life is an op- 
portunity, to realize which they are willing to make 
any sacrifice. To the second it is an enjoyment, a 
matter of personal ease and satisfaction to which all 
else must give way. The one invariably chooses the 
difficult way, since it is the way which leads to the 
greatest results. The other follows the fatal line of 
least resistance, since it gives the least trouble. The 
one lives for the future. He sees the end from the 
beginning and presses toward it. The other lives 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

wholly in the present, and he likes to think of the future 
as little as he likes to think of the past. Of all periods 
of life youth is the most important, because youth is 
the period when character is most plastic, when the 
ideal burns most brightly, when the heart is full of 
courage and generosity, and sacrifice is easy. What a 
man may gain or fail to gain between forty and fifty 
is of little importance in comparison with what the boy 
gains or fails to gain between ten and twenty. Then 
habits are formed and character is created and the 
whole bent is given to life which, with rare exceptions, 
continues to the end. So a noble and toiling youth is 
rarely followed by anything but a noble and affluent 
manhood. The stock of courage we then acquire is 
sufficient to sustain us to old age. And, on the other 
hand, how seldom is a wasted youth followed by any- 
thing but disappointment and sorrow! The strength 
which wsls not sufficient for light burdens is crushed 
by heavier burdens. The courage which flagged 
before the easy test when the boy was surrounded by 
sympathetic parents and teachers will not sustain him 
in the struggle with a hard and unfriendly world. 
The virtue which was corrupted early is apt to become 
vice in later years. He who has wasted this period of 
his existence has sustained an irreparable loss. Other 
things may intervene to make this less apparent, but 
he cannot become what it was once in his power to be. 

What sorrow it must have caused the Disciples to the 
day of their deaths to remember how they failed Jesus in 
his hour of need ! As the story of his passion and death 

no 



GETHSEMANE 

was recited endlessly in the churches, how they must 
have blushed and grieved to remember that in the night 
of his agony he had come to them for comfort and 
support three times and each time was disappointed ! 

The Disciples met their first great ordeal in Geth- 
semane, and they failed to rise to it. The great oppor- 
tunity came to them and found them wanting. And 
though they afterward nobly redeemed themselves, yet 
that particular service, the blessed privilege of succor- 
ing Jesus in his hour of deep despondency and need, of 
standing beside him when he was condemned, of honor- 
ing him when he was mocked and spit upon, of bearing 
his cross up Calvary and of standing beneath it, so that 
his failing eye might rest at least on them with pride 
and satisfaction — all that was forever denied them. 
That lost opportunity no tears and no subsequent 
heroism could recover. We cannot deny it; he was 
both betrayed and denied and forsaken by his Disciples. 

Jesus also met his ordeal in Gethsemane. He met it 
with an open eye and with a constant heart. Lost 
in the splendor of his thought and in the greatness of 
his undertaking, he forgot himself, and with perfect 
naturalness did a deed which has ever rightfully been 
regarded as the turning-point in the history of human- 
ity. He rose to such magnanimity that he prayed for 
his persecutors and did not even reproach his followers 
for their cowardice. He took back his own saying, 
"He that is ashamed of me and of my words in this 
sinful and adulterous generation, of him shall the 
Son of Man be ashamed when he cometh with his holy 

in 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

angels/' and substituted for it, "Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do." He died with 
thoughts of love and salvation in his heart. They 
failed and he succeeded — succeeded because he forgot 
himself and all fear to do the will of God; succeeded 
because he had foreseen the hour, and because his whole 
life had been a preparation to meet it. 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 



And he said, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before 
I suffer: 

For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in 
the Kingdom of God. — St. Luke xxii: 15, 16. 

THESE words were spoken at the most solemn 
moment of Jesus' life. He had staked all on this 
appeal to the nation and he saw that it had failed. 
He had gone up to Jerusalem and had offered her his 
salvation with little doubt of the outcome. John the 
Baptist's bleeding head told him of his own fate. 
"They have done unto him what they listed." Yet 
he hardly needed a spirit from the dead to tell him this. 
He who, rejected by the people, stretched out his hand 
to seize Messiah's crown could hardly doubt the re- 
ception which Jerusalem, the grave of the Prophets, 
would accord him. If Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Caper- 
naum had rejected him, what had he to hope from the 
city that stoneth the Prophets and killeth them that 
are sent unto her? 

Leaving, then, the terrible problem of his personal 
fate in the hands of God, he must at once face the ques- 
tion, How can the Kingdom of God stand and continue 
8 113 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

if the King, rejected and disowned, fall at the moment 
when he announces himself? We know the sad and 
terrible effect of this event upon those who loved him 
best, the scandal of his betrayal and death, which to 
all worldly wisdom involved his cause in certain ruin. 
How did Jesus meet this dreadful difficulty ? He met it 
with an instinct of truth so profound that to this day 
we can only bow before it, without comprehending how 
he attained it. He saw that by his death he should 
attain that which he had not been able to attain by his 
life. He divined that he should serve humanity better 
by dying for it than by living for it, that "except a grain 
of wheat fall into the earth and die it abideth alone." 
He declared in well - attested words that he would 
give his life a ransom for many. 

Before the blow should fall Jesus had one great desire 
which God permitted him to fulfil. It was to take leave 
of his friends and to find a way by which they might 
forever realize his presence among them after he should 
be taken from them. So in the face of his own inward 
sadness and deep depression Jesus once more forgot 
himself to perform the most gracious act of his life. 
He who in life had done absolutely nothing to unite the 
citizens of the Kingdom of God gave this pledge of his 
love which soon his dying lips would not be able to 
utter. After supper, when the bitter herbs were dipped 
in the bowl and the paschal lamb was eaten, Jesus sol- 
emnly rises, breaks a piece of unleavened bread, and 
gives it to his Disciples, saying, " Take, eat, this is my 
body." A little later he takes the cup and gives it to 

114 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 

them, saying, "Drink ye all of this, for this is my blood 
which is shed for many for the remission of sin. 55 This 
is the whole mystery of the Eucharist as Christ or- 
dained it and explained it — simple, spiritual, infinitely 
touching, as are all things that come from him. 

First let us consider Jesus 5 purpose in choosing a 
symbolical act which we perform together as the 
Sacrament of his Church. In human life we see these 
two opposing tendencies, the private interests and 
experiences that we cannot share with others, and 
which therefore separate us, and the public interests 
and common acts and ideals and memories that unite 
us and make us a people. Without this last there is 
no such thing as a nation. Without common acts, 
ideals and memories which we cherish together a peo- 
ple may be a swarm, a barbarian horde, but it is not 
a nation. For a nation is a spiritual principle; and 
when these common ideals and purposes are forgotten 
and obscured by private interest the life of that nation 
is threatened. So all nations have sought out uniting 
symbols that should be to them the outward and visible 
sign of their national existence, and these symbols have 
exercised a strange and magical power over the lives 
and hearts of men. The flag becomes the sign of our 
country's life, its liberty and greatness. For the stars 
and stripes it carries men are willing to die. When we 
behold it floating on high and remember the fearful 
sacrifices that have been made to keep its honor un- 
tarnished and the hope of humanity that is sheltered 
by its broad folds our eyes grow dim, and the more that 

115 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

flag is scarred by shot and shell and blackened by can- 
non-smoke the more men reverence it and the more 
willingly they follow it to death. Such an object 
ceases to be merely material. It is valued not for what 
it is, but for what it represents and suggests. The 
material thing becomes but the sign of our country's 
greatness and of the invisible ideals we cherish. It is 
the sacrament of our national life. 

In our own experience how naturally do we invest 
material objects with the spirit and breath of our own 
life, the emotions we have felt in the use of them, or the 
associations they are able to recall. How many of us 
have had the experience of going back to the house in 
which our childhood was spent and have marveled at 
those eloquent walls, those speaking rooms, which fill 
our hearts with a flood of solemn and tender thoughts 
that we fancied were gone forever. The old house has 
passed into the hands of strangers, but it is ours in a 
sense in which it is not theirs. In its familiar recesses 
dwell the dear spirits of the past, invisible and inaudible 
to others, but visible and audible enough to us. There 
is the room in which your own dear children have lived 
and grown up. The furniture is old, but you have not 
cared to renew it since the birds have flown. The walls 
are disfigured with many marks where the children were 
measured. Why have you not obliterated them? That 
mirror is scratched with your diamond ring, but how 
many vanished faces look out of it wistfully striving to 
catch your eye! Especially do we prize those objects 
which remind us of our dead. Your mother's wedding- 

116 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 

ring is the sacred symbol of her patient life. The Bible 
she read for fifty years, marked in a thousand places 
by the hand long since crumbled into dust, is to you a 
holy book. Even those objects it gives us pain to 
behold we cannot utterly put from us. The mother 
lays carefully away the clothes of her lost child, the 
little shoes of the feet which ended their short journey 
long ago, the toys he loved, the little soldier who used 
to mount guard upon his pillow; and sometimes when 
she is alone she loves to take out these sacred objects 
and to look at them and touch them and weep over 
them. They have a kind of sacramental value like the 
flag, not for what they are, but for what they suggest. 
They are the keys which admit us to an old and van- 
ished paradise. They are magic mirrors in which we 
can see scenes and faces we can see nowhere else. 

So Jesus, in taking leave of his own, left behind him 
his sacrament to remind us of him, to unite us to him 
and to one another. Looked at from this point of view, 
it is all so simple, so perfectly natural, that we dread to 
see theology lay its coarse hands on it and to explain it 
further than Christ has explained it. Jesus had one 
great and dear belief which he embodied here: that 
death could not break the bond which united him to 
those who loved him, but that death would actually 
establish a new bond which would bring him nearer 
than of old; that, though his Disciples would no 
longer see him and hear him audibly speaking to them, 
they would have his presence in their hearts and in 
their lives. "Abide in me and I in you." "Lo, I am 

117 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

with you alway even unto the end of the world." 
"Where two or three are gathered together in my name, 
there am I in the midst of you." Or, as he is pur- 
ported to have said in a fragment of an old Gospel 
discovered in Egypt, "Split the wood and thou shalt 
find me; Cleave the rock, and I am there." It was as 
the constant reminder and pledge of this promise that 
he left us his sacrament on the night before his death. 
We know that this is true of all great souls. They live 
where they are doing their work. They are constantly 
incorporating themselves into the minds and lives of 
other men. While Goethe lived, hundreds of thousands 
of men carried in them living sparks of his soul. After 
death his influence became wider. But this is pre- 
eminently true of the spirit of Jesus. The one perfect 
example of a soul great enough to take possession of all 
mankind is Jesus Christ. He is the Vine, and we are 
the branches, the Vine from which we all hang like 
clustering grapes. Without this belief Christ would 
fade away into the mere memory of a god or man who 
trod this earth two thousand years ago. So many 
think of him merely as a departed being who once 
lived, but who long ago has disappeared into the great 
nether world of the dead, or is on his throne at God's 
right hand, far from the sphere of this world. We have 
Christ among us no more, we need him no more. We 
have his remains. We are living on the perfume of his 
broken vase and divide his inheritance among ourselves. 
The sayings and the treasures of faith, hope, and love 
which he left behind him are our inheritance, which 

118 



THE LORD'S SUPPER 

have taken his place and over which we strive and 
quarrel in his name. For them we are indebted to him, 
but only as to a man of the past. But him we have 
not. Why, then, is the inheritance ever growing? 
Why is it that the perfume of our broken vase is not 
evaporated? Because Christ has not left us, because 
he is with us still, invisibly present among us as God is 
present among us. Now he is not bound to one place. 
He goes up and down no more on weary feet of flesh, 
but from one end of the world to the other he goes on the 
light wings of the spirit. And Christ, who is present in 
so many events of our lives, is present here in a higher 
sense. When we think earnestly and lovingly of him 
he draws near to us. The more earnestly and lovingly 
we think the nearer he draws. We eat his flesh, indeed, 
in the sense in which we understand his spiritual body, 
when we unite our soul to his in the sacrament and 
consecrate ourselves anew to his service. 

In the sacrament of Christ we also hold communion 
with one another. Jesus declared this plainly by mak- 
ing his sacrament a great fraternal meal. St. John 
identified it with the feeding of the multitude so fully 
as to make no other allusion to the institution of the 
Lord's Supper. The instinct of the animal is to eat 
alone. He seizes his food and withdraws to eat it in 
solitude. Man does not desire to eat alone. If he feels 
the need of fellowship at no other time, he feels it when 
he eats. To break bread with another and to eat his 
salt is regarded as a sign of friendship among all nations. 
Even a savage scorns to break bread with his enemy 

119 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

unless he is first reconciled to him. So it has always 
been felt that hatred and enmity would break the bond 
of Christ's sacrament. So we are always bidden to 
come in love and charity to that feast, and those who 
are in enmity and hatred are warned to keep away, on 
the ground that they will eat and drink nothing but 
condemnation; for when the bond of love is broken 
the sacrament of Christ's death is invalidated. To 
make our fellowship plainer we actually consent to eat 
out of one plate and to drink out of one cup. 

This much I presume is readily perceived. Among 
persons of education and refinement hatred and enmity, 
thank God, are not common. But the avoidance of 
them is but a shadow of the purpose and wish of 
Christ. What this Sacrament teaches, as far as our 
fellow-men are concerned, is that we shall be to them 
what Christ is to us; that as Christ has given all for us, 
we shall give all we have and are to others; that as he is 
constantly incorporating himself into us, so we should 
incorporate ourselves into other men, giving them con- 
stantly the best that is in us, which is divine life. If 
with this feeling of desire to draw near to Christ and 
through him to help men we approach the Sacrament, 
we shall fulfil his purpose, and we may have confidence 
that we shall be welcome guests. "Ye who do truly 
and earnestly repent you of your sins and are in love 
and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a 
new life, following the commandments of God and 
walking henceforward in His holy ways, draw near 
with faith and take this Sacrament to your comfort." 



VI 

THE MYSTERY OF JESUS* DEATH 1 

For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
and to give his life a ransom for many. — St. Mark x: 45. 

TO-DAY Christian believers are in a very peculiar 
position in regard to Jesus' death. In the 
Christian Church throughout the ages this act of Christ 
has ever been regarded as the central fact of his life, 
the rock on which his religion stands, an act of saving 
power and the beginning of new life for man. Modern 
thought, while rejecting all ancient theories of atone- 
ment, has by no means rejected the significance of the 
facts themselves. On the contrary, it ascribes to them 
an eternal significance, since they gave us the one 
inviolable figure of humanity and transformed his 
movement from a short-lived Jewish school of ethical 
culture into a world religion. If it has rejected the 
ancient theories of atonement it has done so either 
because they were historically untenable or morally 
inadequate. To-day it seems as if the veil of mystery 
which shrouds the Cross of Christ would never again be 
lifted. It seems to be the will of God that these facts — 

1 The argument and many of the statements of this study are taken 
from Schweitzer's Skizze, the most important contribution to the life of 
Jesus produced in our generation. A translation by the Rev. Walter Lowrie 
will soon appear. 

121 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

the holiest which our earth has ever witnessed — should 
produce forever their impression on the human heart 
without much help from our interpretations and ex- 
planations. Two things are certain; we cannot revive 
the old interpretations and cause them again to minister 
to the higher life of man; neither can we be content 
with the denials and paltry explanations of modern 
rationalism which sees in Jesus' death only the highest 
example of ministering love, for the facts are so much 
greater. And if theology sinks exhausted before the 
stupendous height of the facts pertaining to the death of 
Christ, criticism has not proved itself better able to 
rise to them. Most of the great critical lives of Jesus are 
fairly satisfactory up to a certain point. That point 
invariably is the period of his life when the thought of 
death first arose in Jesus' mind immediately after the 
confession of Simon Peter. From this point on the 
critics grope in thick darkness and proceed with un- 
certain steps. They tell us of growing opposition and 
growing discouragement, of the painful effect produced 
by the execution of John the Baptist, of vacillation and 
hurried flights, of the unwilling abandonment of his 
old vocation of prophet and teacher, and the sudden 
fatal determination to stretch forth his hand to seize 
Messiah's crown. All inadequate, conjectural, and for 
the most part false. 

The reason of this inability to write the last great 
chapter of our Saviour's life is the failure or the unwill- 
ingness of all these authors to grasp the motives and the 

intentions which led up to it. They have sought the 

122 



THE MYSTERY OF JESUS' DEATH 

explanations in changed circumstances, in failure and 
opposition, whereas the change of program came solely 
from Jesus himself, from the new perception of Jesus of 
the necessity for his death and his deliberate intention 
of ushering in the Kingdom of God by dying. Up to a 
certain moment in Jesus' life there is no recorded allu- 
sion to his death. From this point on the necessity of 
dying is constantly on our Saviour's mind and on his 
lips. Any real and historical explanation of the mean- 
ing of Christ's death must therefore proceed from his 
consciousness and ask first, Why did Jesus feel the 
necessity of a voluntary surrender of his life? and 
secondly, What did he expect to attain by his 
death? If we ever decipher this mystery we shall 
do so only under the guidance of Christ him- 
self. 

There can be no question that Jesus laid down his 
life voluntarily. He set his face to go to Jerusalem, 
expecting and intending to die there, and he made no 
effort to escape. His death was not the result of mis- 
understanding or of the opposition of men and the 
failure of his own cause. It was his own voluntary act, a 
purpose to which he came after the most profound and 
careful thought. Any one reading the story of the 
trial and knowing what he was can see he intended it. 
Nor is it questionable that Jesus himself attached a 
saving power to his death. He died for others. In 
one of his most tremendous and genuine sayings he 
declared, "For even the Son of Man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

ransom for many." 1 Yet this offering was made, not 
with the thought of disarming the anger of a God whom 
Jesus conceived as a God of love, not that God could not, 
would not otherwise forgive our sins, for he himself 
declared God's everlasting willingness to forgive, and 
he taught us confidently to pray for forgiveness, with- 
out any sacrifice or expiation, even as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. 

The reason why it is so difficult to understand 
Christ's motive and purpose in dying is that he himself 
was so reticent in regard to it. At a certain definite 

1 This saying is contained in St. Mark's Gospel (x: 45). Since Jesus here 
definitely announces not only the voluntary surrender of his life, but the 
redeeming power of his death, critics, almost without exception, have 
missed this golden guiding thread, and have set themselves to void these 
words of all authenticity and significance. Such a saying, they assert, 
could not have emanated from Jesus at this time. It is an afterthought 
ascribed to him by St. Mark, who had learned the doctrine of the atoning 
sacrifice of Christ's death from St. Paul. Paul, therefore, is the real author 
of this saying, or at least of this thought. Fortunately, we are in a position 
to judge of this for ourselves. St. Paul (in I Corinthians xi) in describing 
the significance of Jesus' death in connection with the Sacrament, accord- 
ing to an old tradition which he says he received from the Lord, makes use 
of a different expression which is incorporated with a modification from 
Mark into the later Gospels. He says, "My body which is given for you.' 9 
In other words, he is writing from the point of view of the congregation of 
Christian believers for whom Christ died. St. Mark, however, doubtless 
repeating the exact words of Jesus, which later became incomprehensible, 
represents Jesus as saying, "The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom 
for many," not the congregation of believers, but an indeterminate multi- 
tude. This was not taken from St. Paul. On the contrary, the point of 
view antedates Paul's point of view altogether, and goes back to a time 
when as yet there was no congregation of believers. This saying therefore 
must be regarded as an authentic saying of Christ, the oldest which we 
possess on this subject, and the only theory of the significance of Jesus' 
death which can be regarded as historical is that which can explain what 
these words mean, " And to give his life a ransom for many." 

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THE MYSTERY OF JESUS' DEATH 

time of his ministry, after the confession of Peter, he 
informed his disciples of the necessity of his suffering. 
Before that time he had not mentioned it; afterward he 
spoke of it constantly. Yet he did not tell them what 
had led him to this resolution. One other remark must 
be made. There is so much that is un-Jewish, timeless, 
and therefore modern in Jesus' character and teaching 
that we are apt to imagine it is all modern and to set 
aside and ignore all those elements of his life and 
thought which do not adjust themselves to our present 
way of thinking. But therein we make a mistake, and 
the result of our violent wrenching of his personality 
from the setting of his earthly life and from the world of 
thought in which he grew up has been to blur the fine- 
ness and originality of his thought, to rob him of his 
inherent force and energy, and to represent him finally 
as merely resigned in the great crisis which he himself 
sought with all the power of his will. Perfectly original 
as he was, timeless as to his own thought and teaching, 
he never rejected the religious hopes and beliefs of his 
people. His religious life was nourished on the books 
and characters of the Old Testament. He derived 
all his early beliefs from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
Daniel, the Psalms, the minor prophets, which he con- 
stantly quoted. Though the ceremonial and legal 
aspects of Judaism repelled him, its mystical and 
spiritual elements powerfully attracted him, especially 
the great world of thought and expectation which grew 
up around the conception of Messiah, and Messiah's 
Kingdom was the world in which he lived. No man, 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

no matter how great, can be judged or understood apart 
from the beliefs and influences under which he has 
lived. Had Christ been born in Athens, or had he 
grown up beneath the oaks of England, that circum- 
stance would doubtless have tinged his genius and have 
given another form to his mission. Born, or at least 
reared, in Galilee, at a time when all men's hearts were 
pondering the great Messianic problem, this was the 
form under which life was revealed to him. 

Jesus, for example, understood, and all his hearers 
understood, by the Kingdom of God something quite 
different from what we understand to-day, if indeed 
we understand anything. He did not mean by the 
Kingdom of God the foundation of a society of believers 
in a church or the mere struggle after a perfect life. 
He meant something definite, concrete, the end of this 
old world, the sudden coming of God in judgment and 
to usher in an eternal Kingdom of righteousness, a belief 
which haunted the prophets, especially Daniel, and 
which on account of the mighty preaching of the 
Baptist was perfectly understood by the people at that 
time. Nor did he think of that Kingdom as a distant 
event belonging to the dim illimitable future. He 
prayed, "Thy kingdom come," and when he began to 
preach his first words were, "The Kingdom of Heaven 
is at hand." 

It was a wide-spread belief of the Jews that when the 
people repented and turned to God, the Kingdom 
would come. John the Baptist had preached and the 
people had repented, hence he believed that the 

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THE MYSTERY OF JESUS' DEATH 

Kingdom was at hand; hence the immense importance 
he attached to John, going so far as to be baptized him- 
self, and to call John the greatest born of woman, 
because by him the Kingdom had been brought near. 
Before John the prophets had prophesied merely, but 
since John the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence 
and the violent lay hold of it — i. e., compel it to come, 
an important passage which for the first time receives an 
interpretation. When he sent out his Disciples it was 
to make the final announcement. He believed that 
before they returned the great event might take place. 
So he bade them make haste, to carry no baggage, 
and to salute no man by the way. "Go ye not into the 
way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans 
enter ye not. And as ye go, preach and say the King- 
dom of Heaven is at hand. Ye shall not have gone 
over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." 
"There be some standing here who shall not taste of 
death until they see the Kingdom of God come with 
power." 1 

1 After the first preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom in Galilee Jesus 
sent forth his Disciples to finish the work which he had begun. He con- 
strained them to make haste, to impede themselves with nothing save a 
staff only, no script, no bread, no money, but to be shod with sandals and 
not to take two coats. He bade them not to turn aside. They went forth 
and preached, and their preaching was believed, and they returned to Jesus 
accompanied by a great multitude estimated at not fewer than five thousand 
persons who confidently looked for the coming of the Kingdom. With 
them Jesus celebrated the great Supper on the shore of Gennesaret which 
has come down to us as the feeding of the five thousand. It is plain, how- 
ever, that this was no ordinary meal, the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, 
but a symbolic and sacramental act, the great Messianic supper which 
should precede the coming of the Kingdom, and which was repeated in 
more solemn form and under more definite and awful figures on the last 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

Of this Kingdom he regarded himself as King. There 
can be no question that this conviction came to him 
at the beginning of his ministry and caused his ministry. 
But in this sense Messiah and Messiah's Kingdom 
belong together. The tragedy of Jesus' life lay in the 
fact that Messiah appeared before his Kingdom; that 
he came, but the Kingdom, in the sense in which he 
understood it, did not come. This also was an ancient 
belief. It was said in the Talmud that Messiah shall 
be in the world unknown, unsuspected. So St. John 
says: "He was in the world, and the world was made 
by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto 
his own/and his own received him not." The difference 
between St. John and the Synoptists is that St. John 
consistently represents Jesus as already Messiah on 
earth, whereas they represent him as the one designated 
by God to be Messiah in the Kingdom when it comes. 
So he regarded himself, and for this reason he said so 
little about his Messiahship that men have denied that 
he accepted the role at all. It was his secret with God 
which men did not need to know, since when the 
Kingdom came it would be revealed. He did not 
divulge this even to his Disciples until Simon Peter 
had divined it and confessed it, as Jesus said, "not 
because flesh and blood (i.e., he himself) had revealed 

night of Jesus' life. The proof of this is to be found in the Gospel of St. John, 
who identifies the feeding of the five thousand so entirely with the sacrament 
that he makes no other mention of the institution of the Lord's Supper, 
and represents Jesus as here speaking unreservedly of giving his flesh to be 
eaten and his blood to be drunk: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
Man and drink his blood ye have no life in you." 

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THE MYSTERY OF JESUS' DEATH 

it to him, but the Father in Heaven." That is the 
meaning of the Transfiguration when he whom his 
Disciples had followed only as their Teacher and Friend 
stood before them in a new and heavenly light. Even 
then he solemnly pledged them not to divulge his secret 
to any one: "And he commanded them to tell no man." 
We are accustomed to think that when John the 
Baptist sent his Disciples to Jesus to ask, "Art thou 
he that should come, or look we for another?" he meant, 
"Art thou the Christ?" But here again we are cer- 
tainly mistaken. It was universally believed that 
before Christ came the great prophet Elijah would 
appear among men, according to the saying of Malachi, 
"Behold, I will send unto you the prophet Elias before 
the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord." 
When John the Baptist heard in prison of the mighty 
deeds of Jesus he thought that he might be that prophet, 
as the form of his question indicates, for "He that 
should come" was understood to be Elias, not Christ. 
The alternative John proposed to Jesus was a false 
alternative, to which Jesus wx>uld not answer Yes or 
No, and the reason why John did not regard Jesus as 
the Christ was that he did not regard himself as Elias 
the forerunner. "And this is the answer of John when 
the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to 
ask him, Who art thou? and he confessed and denied 
not, but confessed, I am not the Christ; and they 
said, What art thou? Art thou Elias? and he said I 
am not. Art thou that prophet? and he answered, 
No." Jesus, however, recognizing Christ in himself, 

9 129 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

recognizes Elias in John. Hence, instead of answering 
John's question he told John's Disciples simply to 
report to their master what they had^ found him to be. 
"Go and tell John again the things ye do hear and see; 
the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers 
are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up 
and the poor have the gospel preached to them." 
Such acts as these are not the acts of the forerunner, but 
of the Messiah himself. So Jesus declared to the 
people immediately afterward in speaking of John, 
"And if ye will receive it this is Elias which was to 
come"; and again to his Disciples when they asked, 
"How say the Scribes that Elias must first come?" 
"I say unto you that Elias is come already, and that 
they have done unto him what they listed." 

One other thought of the deepest significance to 
Jesus' destiny was the universal expectation that the 
Kingdom of God would be ushered in with fearful signs 
and by terrible affliction to the world. From ancient 
times the prophets had foretold the coming of the 
great and dreadful day of the Lord, when the sun 
should be darkened and the moon turned to blood. 
The elaborate and fearful pictures of the Book of 
Revelation show the profound effect this belief had 
produced on the popular imagination. The Talmud 
contains curious passages to the same effect. It will 
be a time of fearful catastrophes of nature, when 
every year shall bring its particular plague. Israel 
shall sink to the lowest depths of unbelief. The noblest 
men shall wander like outcasts from city to city, finding 

130 



THE MYSTERY OF JESUS' DEATH 

grace and acceptance nowhere. The holiest ties shall 
be dissolved. Children shall mock their parents and 
fathers shall betray their children, and before Messiah 
comes all hope of his coming shall have vanished from 
the earth. In the light of his expectation we can 
understand Jesus 5 terrible warnings of the destruction 
of the Temple and of the signs that shall usher in his 
coming: "Take heed that no man deceive you." 
"And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars and 
fearful signs and great earthquakes." "Let him that 
is on the housetop not come down to fetch anything 
out of his house." "In that day two men shall be in 
the field. One shall be taken, and the other left." 
"And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter." 
"For this shall be a great tribulation such as was not 
since the beginning of the world, no, nor shall be, and ex- 
cept those days shall be shortened there shall no flesh 
be saved, but for the elect's sake those days shall be 
shortened." 1 It is this fearful thought which casts its 
shadow over every page of the New Testament. The 
thought of future suffering is never absent from it. 
Even the Beatitudes close with "Blessed are ye when 
men shall hate you and persecute you and shall say 
all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. 
Rejoice and be exceeding glad." The greater the 
tribulation, the nearer your reward. "When these 
things shall come to pass, then look up and lift up your 

1 Although these apocalyptic warnings were greatly elaborated by the 
Synoptic Evangelists, there can be no doubt that they have a solid nucleus 
in Jesus' authentic teaching. In John's Gospel they are allowed to fall 
altogether, because at the time he wrote this point of view had passed away. 

131 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." Even the 
Lord's Prayer, which is almost wholly taken up with 
the coming Kingdom, ends with the solemn prayer that 
we may not be brought to that trial, but delivered from 
the coming evil: "Lead us not into temptation, but 
deliver us from evil." So in the mind of Christ the 
thought of suffering was never absent. At first it was 
the suffering of all that haunted him. Then, in some 
way inscrutable to us, the thought arose in him that he 
might suffer in our stead, that he might take upon him- 
self all the suffering of the world and bear it alone, 
giving his life a ransom for many and ushering in the 
Kingdom without any period of fearful woe for the 
earth. How this wonderful thought came he did not 
divulge. If we may presume to offer an opinion it 
would seem from meditation on the writing of the second 
Isaiah. At all events, he found it in the Scriptures, 
for he said, "How it is written of the Son of Man 
that he must suffer many things and be set at naught." 
Isaiah describes such an one as he actually was — the 
perfect servant of God, led like a lamb to the slaughter 
— a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He 
describes him as one who was not disobedient and who 
poured out his soul unto death, an object of derision 
and despite, the mock of sinners, pierced, insulted, 
spat upon, and finally put to death. "He had no 
beauty that we should desire him"; his countenance 
was marred beyond all human recognition. And yet 
even among these malefactors there dawned the per- 
ception that this man was not as themselves, but that 

132 



THE MYSTERY OF JESUS' DEATH 

in some mysterious way he was there as their represen- 
tative, suffering what otherwise they would have 
suffered. "Surely he hath borne our griefs and car- 
ried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, 
smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for 
our transgression; he was bruised for our iniquities; 
the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him and 
by his stripes we are healed." And Isaiah conceives 
that through such a one God will create a new heaven 
and a new earth. To him it is a little thing to bring 
Jacob and gather together the outcasts of Israel. "The 
Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the bright- 
ness of thy rising"; and through the sacrifice of his 
death a new world shall come into being. This is the 
wonderful thought which Jesus embraced and enacted. 
For whomever it was intended by the prophet, Jesus 
gave this thought life by transferring it to himself. 
So the greatest thought of the Old Testament and the 
greatest deed of the New Religion are for the first time 
brought into their true relation. And in order that he 
might fulfil this prophecy the nature of his act must 
be kept secret, or the Scripture would not be fulfilled. 
He must enact the divine drama as God had appointed. 
He must remain unknown, undiscovered. Men must 
remain in ignorance of him. Sinners must have their 
way with him. They must wreak their fury on him and 
kill him in ignorance of what they are doing in order 
that he may offer an atonement for them and save the 
world the indescribable suffering it would otherwise 

have to endure. Therefore he could excuse his Dis- 

133 



RELIG ION AND LIFE 

ciples when they forsook him, and pray for his murderers 
on the ground of their ignorance. Truly they knew not 
what they did. In the hand of God they were the 
blind instruments of salvation. Once only did the 
mighty purpose waver — in the darkest hour, before 
death began to cast its merciful anodyne over his senses, 
he complained that he had been deceived, that God had 
forsaken him. Yet he died declaring that his work was 
done: "It is finished," and this, his last saying, gains 
new definiteness. 

One thing more: Jesus at first seems to have expected 
that the Kingdom would come in his lifetime. His 
preaching began with "Repent ye, for the Kingdom of 
Heaven is at hand." He sent out his Disciples to make 
the last announcement of the coming Kingdom and 
assured them that the Kingdom would overtake them 
on their way. They had preached and the people had 
believed, and more than five thousand of them had 
followed the Disciples back to Jesus, and he had cele- 
brated with them the great Messianic supper which has 
come down to us as The Feeding of Five Thousand. In 
other words, the preparations were complete and yet 
the Kingdom came not. Why did it tarry? What 
more could he do to make it come? Then the new 
thought arose — he must die to usher it in. He, whom 
God had designated as Messiah and King, must go to 
the eternal world to meet the Kingdom and return with 
it : hence the innumerable promises of his return in the 
clouds of Heaven; hence the faith of the early Church, 
impossible to understand on any other hypothesis, 

134 



THE MYSTERY OF JESUS' DEATH 

that Jesus would soon return bringing the Kingdom 
with him, and that this return would mark the end of 
the world. 

What actually brought Jesus to the cross at last was 
the betrayal of his secret by Judas Iscariot. The 
abhorrence in which Judas is held by every writer 
of the New Testament convinces us that his was no 
common crime. Yet until recently none has been able 
to say what his crime actually was. It was but a 
slight service for Judas to point out to the Temple 
guard the spot where Jesus spent his last night on 
earth. Jesus took no elaborate precautions to conceal 
his whereabouts, and if the chief priests desired to know 
it all they had to do was to send their detectives to 
follow him and find out. What Judas betrayed was, 
not where Jesus spent the night merely, but the great 
Messianic secret until then so jealously guarded. 
What Caiaphas wanted was not merely to lay hands on 
Jesus, a task which he was quite competent to perform : 
it was a capital indictment before the supreme court of 
the nation, which would result in a public execution, 
for he dared attempt the life of the great Prophet of 
Galilee in no other way; and this he could obtain only 
from a personal Disciple, for Jesus had taken none 
other into his confidence. This appears plainly in the 
trial. At first Caiaphas tried to convict him by wit- 
nesses, and failed. They knew only a few garbled 
extracts from his public teaching: "Yea, though they 
brought many false witnesses, yet could they not 
agree." Caiaphas saw his victim escaping. Then he 

135 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

played his last card, using the information he had 
obtained from Judas. Rising, he solemnly accosts 
Jesus, and, putting him on oath, he asks a new question : 
"I adjure thee by the living God, tell me if thou be 
Christ the Son of God." Thus interrogated and know- 
ing all that it meant, Jesus instantly confessed it, and as 
solemnly rehearsed his full claim to Caiaphas. "Thou 
hast said it, and henceforth thou shalt see the Son 
of Man seated on the right hand of Power and coming 
in the clouds of Heaven." This was enough: "What 
need we of any further witnesses? Behold, ye have 
heard his blasphemy, what think ye? They all cried 
out, he is worthy of death." So was the Scripture ful- 
filled. So we can see why from this point on Jesus 
made no defense, no attempt to save his life. He died 
of his own determinate purpose to fulfil the Scriptures, 
to save the world from coming evil; and he did save the 
world in an even deeper sense than he anticipated. 
To him his death was but one step, an episode in the 
divine tragedy. To us it is the central fact in the 
history of the world, the eternal source from which our 
higher life flows. 



VII 

THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

KEIM begins his classical discussion of the Resur- 
rection of Jesus with these words: "The history 
of every human life ends at the grave. It is an axiom 
of ancient and modern times that the dead do not rise. 
The elder Pliny finds a melancholy consolation for all 
the weaknesses of men in the thought that not even 
God can wake the dead. . . . Tradition makes a differ- 
ence in the case of Jesus. To him there was deliverance 
from death upon the earth itself. . . . This tradition 
has been vigorously attacked from the beginning until 
now by Jews and heathen and at last by Christians 
also. Formerly the attack was prompted by hatred, 
now by love of truth." It is safe to say that since 
these words were penned no such acute discussion of 
every phase of the question has appeared. Biblical 
science and psychology have developed far beyond 
Keim's standpoint in 1871, but no man has discussed 
this problem from so many sound points of view or with 
such refined subtlety as Theodor Keim in the last 
volume of his Jesus of Nazara. 

Of the four latest investigators, Oscar Holzmann, 
Schmiedel, Sanday, and Dobschutz, the first two appear 

137 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

to reject all reality of fact and to content themselves with 
supplying plausible motives. Of all these Schmiedel 
is by far the most learned, painstaking and ingenious. 
His treatment of the resurrection, 1 however, is too 
exclusively critical and literary, and his psychological 
explanation lacks the simplicity and brilliancy of 
Renan's. All that he claims for his argument is "The 
possibility, the probability if you will, of the explana- 
tion from subjective visions." Holzmann displays a 
very half-hearted interest in the subject, and contents 
himself with tracing a plausible psychological develop- 
ment in the series of visions recorded in I Corinthians 
which he seems inclined to refer to mental suggestions, 
and dismisses the subject. Sanday, as Canon Henson 
complains, gives the impression of shrinking from the 
real question, and his analysis of the facts is so slight 
that it is difficult to see wherein he has advanced the 
discussion. Dobschiitz in his interesting little mono- 
graph, "Ostern and Pfingsten," concerns himself 
chiefly with the empty grave and the appearance to the 
five hundred brethren which he identifies with the 
manifestation of the Spirit at Pentecost. Lastly, light 
has sprung up from an unexpected quarter in the 
posthumous work of Frederick Myers, to whom I shall 
revert later. 

Whatever our predilection, however stanch our faith, 
educated men to-day recognize that this fortress is not 
to be taken by storm. To think to find a smooth and 
easy way to certainty in this matter, as Keim says, is a 

i " Resurrection and Ascension Narratives," Encyclopaedia Biblica. 

138 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

mistake unworthy of a thoughtful, truth-loving man. 
To attain even a reasonable probability requires vthe 
sober employment of all our faculties and, above all, good 
temper. It is true the resurrection of Jesus is next 
to the best attested fact in Gospel history. It is also 
true that the testimony on which the fact rests swarms 
with inconsistencies and mutually canceling particu- 
lars. More than a century ago Lessing complained of 
" the more than ten contradictions." Subsequent criti- 
cism has added to their number. 1 According to one 
account, the resurrection took place at the end of the 
Sabbath, on Saturday afternoon; according to others, 
on Sunday morning. It was accompanied by an earth- 
quake, and occurred by the aid and in the presence of 
either one or two angels, sitting or standing, within or 
without the tomb. The person of Jesus is first met 
by one, two, or three Galilean women, or by one of the 
Apostles. According to some accounts, Jesus appeared 
to his Disciples in Galilee; according to other accounts, 
in Jerusalem. In St. Matthew, women held him by the 
feet. In St. John, Mary is forbidden to touch him. 
According to some reports, Jesus possessed a tangible, 
material body which permitted him to eat and drink. 
According to others, he appeared and disappeared, 
passed through closed doors, and was not recognized 
by those who knew him until their eyes had been 
supernaturally opened. According to some, he was 
seen only once; according to others, several times. 

1 Schmiedel appends an interesting table illustrating the variations of the 
narratives. Here I give the more important of those mentioned by Keim. 

139 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

Finally, he left the earth either on the very day of his 
resurrection or forty days later on a Thursday, instead 
of Sunday, or he was already in heaven when he gave 
his last greeting to his Disciples. Difficulties like these 
demand, if not absolute resignation, at least patience 
and moderation. And this is the evidence on which 
belief in Christ's resurrection rests! 

Our oldest witnesses are, and until the date of the 
Apocalypse is determined will be, the last chapter of 
St. Mark's Gospel as far as the eighth verse and the 
fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians. St. Mark merely 
describes the empty grave and the young man clothed 
in white who announces the resurrection and commands 
the women to inform the Disciples and Peter that they 
shall see their Master in Galilee. The women, we are 
told, departed from the sepulcher troubled and amazed, 
"neither said they anything to any man, for they were 
affrighted." It is hard to believe that this vivid and 
realistic Gospel closed in so unsatisfactory a manner. 
Accordingly we hear of a "lost conclusion" of Mark 
which was allowed to fall because of its inconsistency 
with other later Gospels. Many attempts have been 
made to restore this lost ending. The most plausible 
conjecture is that it described a meeting of Jesus and 
his Apostles on the Sea of Galilee, which the author of 
the fourth Gospel made use of in drawing the exquisite 
picture of his twenty-first chapter, which does not fit 
into the general frame- work of this Gospel, but is added 
as a kind of appendix. Harnack and Rohrbach assume 
this, although they also discover traces of Mark's 

140 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

conclusion in the recently discovered Gospel of Peter. 
From these conjectures, however, nothing can be 
established. The one certain point of this most an- 
cient Gospel record is that it points to Galilee, not to 
Jerusalem, as the scene of the resurrection appearances. 
The best evidence is still St. Paul. Recent criticism 
has endeavored to shake the authenticity of I Corin- 
thians, which even Baur spared — but, as Schmiedel 
confesses, " on what slender grounds !" In fact, it would 
be safe to say that even if the first Epistle to the Corin- 
thians should be proved to be of later date and by 
another hand, its statement of resurrection appear- 
ances, which differs so radically from others, must be 
allowed to stand, since after the Gospel accounts had 
been promulgated it would never have been invented. 
Often as the evidential value of the passage has been 
stated, I must once more briefly indicate it. The 
usual date assigned to this Epistle is the year 55, but 
the words of Paul, "I delivered unto you first of all," 
carry us back about four years further to his first 
visit to Corinth; and finally the expression, "that 
which I also received," can refer to nothing but the 
tradition delivered to him by the earliest Apostles and 
first Christians during his two weeks' visit to Peter in 
Jerusalem, described in Galatians as taking place three 
years after Paul's conversion, or about the year 35. 
Here, then, we have direct, unadulterated tradition 
from the earliest times. There is no doubt Paul 
intended this list to be complete and correctly ordered. 
The Corinthian heretics' denial of the resurrection in 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

general, which seemed to him to carry with it denial of 
the resurrection of Jesus, compelled him to look care- 
fully to his historical evidences. Paul was prepared to 
stake the whole truth of the Christian religion on this 
one fact. All the more necessary, therefore, was it 
for him to establish it on an impregnable foundation. 
The measured sobriety of his language, the strict limi- 
tation of the appearances of the Risen One, his careful 
mention of names, the psychological probability of his 
sequence, his rigid exclusion of all legendary, highly 
colored incidents, all produce an impression most 
favorable to his truthfulness and to his painstaking 
care. 1 Nor was this category of resurrection appear- 
ances hastily constructed for the occasion. It appears 
to be, as Paul himself describes it, a Kerygma, a definite 
formula received from the old Disciples and which he 
habitually employed. This formula is as follows: 

That Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, 

And that He was buried, 

And that He rose again on the third day according to the 
Scriptures, 

And that He appeared to Cephas, 

Then to the Twelve, 

Afterward He appeared to above five hundred brethren 
at once of whom the majority are still alive, but some sleep. 

Afterward He appeared to James, 

Then to all the Apostles. 

Last of all as to an untimely birth He appeared also to me. 

In all, six appearances, neither more nor less. 
Before subjecting this testimony of Paul to a closer 

1 Keim. 
142 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

examination it is necessary to cast a brief glance over 
the records of the Evangelists. In all four of our 
Gospels the discovery of the resurrection, or, rather, 
of the empty tomb, was made by one or other of the 
Galilean women who had repaired to the grave, as is 
expressly stated in the first three Gospels, for the pious 
purpose of embalming the body to retard the processes 
of dissolution. In all the Gospels the announcement is 
made by an angel or by angels or by a young man in 
white clothing. In Matthew and Mark the Disciples 
are pointed to Galilee and are ordered to repair thither, 
where they are promised a sight of their risen Master. 
In Luke and John this old and doubtless true tradition 
is allowed to fall, and Jesus makes his appearances 
immediately in Jerusalem, and yet a reminiscence of 
the earlier tradition is preserved. In Luke it is softened 
to, "Remember how he spoke unto you when he was 
yet in Galilee." In John it reappears in the last meet- 
ing by the Sea of Tiberias. In the Acts of the Apostles 
the command to depart to Galilee is actually changed 
to a command not to depart from Jerusalem. 

Further, as we pass from earlier to later sources we 
observe a marked tendency to materialize the body of 
the Risen One and a disposition to draw him more and 
more into the sphere of mundane life. St. Matthew 
describes the meeting on an unnamed mountain in 
Galilee, and relates a brief farewell discourse of Jesus 
with his Disciples, but refrains from attempting to de- 
scribe the body of Jesus, makes no mention of eating, 
of physical contact except by the women, or of other cor- 
ns 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

poreal acts. St. Luke describes repeated eating and 
drinking, a display of wounded members, an invitation 
to the Disciples to assure themselves of the reality of 
flesh and bones. St. John, while refraining from say- 
ing that Jesus actually partook of food himself, repre- 
sents him as offering food to the Disciples and as invit- 
ing Thomas not only to touch him, but to thrust his 
hand into his wounds. It is here the contradictions, 
inconsistencies, and grave difficulties begin to oppress 
us. To deny them or to think to reconcile them simply 
exposes a man to ridicule and contempt. In the face 
of the sore trials that beset us on every side it is not 
wonderful that some take refuge in complete denial and 
others in a faith that finds support in general religious 
and philosophic considerations and asks no aid of 
stubborn, intractable facts. Let us consider our diffi- 
culties one by one if we cannot remove them, beginning 
with the empty grave. Schmiedel, following Keim, 
both in his article on the Resurrection and in that on 
the Gospels in Cheyne's Encyclopaedia, dismisses the 
empty sepulcher as an unhistorical figment. The 
arguments he adduces are St. Paul's silence and the 
assertion of St. Mark that the women, terrified and 
affrighted, told no man of the young man's message. 
This he considers an admission that the empty grave 
was not at first a motive for belief in the resurrection of 
Christ, but was added later— too late for verification to 
be possible. In this case we must reject the women's 
visit to the grave altogether, for if the women had 
visited the grave for the purpose of embalming the 

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THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

body and had carried out their purpose the story of the 
empty grave could hardly have arisen. But this 
episode is so embedded in all four Gospels, it is intro- 
duced with such transparent good faith, the motive of 
the women is so natural, the moral effect produced by 
their discovery still stands out so plainly, that to sup- 
pose the whole episode the invention of a later age to 
bolster up belief in Christ's resurrection is very im- 
probable. The very confusion that the four Gospels 
exhibit as to the number and names of the women 
speaks for the good faith of the episode. Although I 
would by no means assert that without the empty 
grave belief in the Lord's resurrection would not have 
arisen, I affirm that without it this belief would have 
taken another form than that which we find in the 
New Testament. 

As to St. Paul, is it so certain, after all, that he knew 
nothing of an empty grave? In his Kerygma we find 
these words: "That Christ died for our sins according 
to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he 
rose again on the third day, according to the Scrip- 
tures." Remember that Paul did not invent these 
words; they were part of the original tradition he 
received. And that Paul attached some mystical mean- 
ing to the burial of Christ we know from the passage 
in Romans (vi : 4) where he speaks of our being buried 
with him by baptism into death in order that, being 
planted together in the likeness of his death, we may 
be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Moreover, 
what meaning did Paul attach to the expression, "He 

10 145 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

rose again on the third day, according to the Scrip- 
tures"? What Scripture was thus fulfilled? Are we to 
refer it to Isaiah's promise to Hezekiah in the second 
book of Kings (xx: 5), "I will heal thee; on the third 
day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord"? 
Or shall we remind ourselves of Hosea's "After two days 
will he revive us, and the third day he will raise us up"? 
Or shall we think of Jonah's three days and three nights 
in the whale's belly which St. Matthew (xii:40) so 
misinterpreted? To tell the truth, none of these pas- 
sages has any application to the resurrection of Christ. 
We know not what "Scripture" of the Old Testament 
was thus fulfilled. We are therefore led to think of 
the Lord's own prognostication of his death recorded 
in the Gospels, but what is peculiar here, as Dobschiltz 
observes, is that Jesus spoke invariably of the lapse of 
three days, not of the third day. 

Let us consider a final expedient. Jesus was buried 
on Friday afternoon. All our accounts agree that on 
Sunday morning the grave was found empty by women. 
A day had intervened. It was therefore the third day. 
Is not this the origin of the ancient formula quoted by 
St. Paul, "He rose again the third day according to 
the Scriptures"? Paul distinguishes sharply between 
Christ's resurrection and his subsequent appearances. 
Does not even in Paul the mention of a third day point to 
the empty grave? In admitting this I am exposing my- 
self to additional difficulties I would gladly avoid, but 
I cannot deny it. If any portion of the Gospel tradition 
of Christ's resurrection is true, it is that his grave was 

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THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

visited early on Easter morning and was found empty. 
Here, however, following St. Mark, we may believe 
the tradition ends. The women saw nothing but an 
empty grave. The angels to which the faith of the early 
Church so easily appealed have ceased to befriend us. 
Whatever impetus, support, corroboration the knowl- 
edge of the empty grave afforded later belief, faith in 
Christ's resurrection did not spring from an empty 
grave, but from appearances of the Risen One. 

1. The Scene of the Appearances 

As to the scene of Christ's appearances our task is 
not so difficult. All our older sources point to Galilee, 
not to Jerusalem. "After I am raised up I will go 
before you into Galilee," said Jesus in Matthew and 
Mark. 1 "Lo he goeth before you into Galilee," said 
the angel in Matthew. "Go tell his disciples and 
Peter he goeth before you into Galilee," said the young 
man in Mark. And this meeting Matthew punctually 
reports as taking place on a mountain in Galilee. 
St. Paul, it is true, mentions no locality, but the appear- 
ance to the five hundred brethren at once, unless we 
identify this event with the Day of Pentecost, must 
have occurred in Galilee, since the Lord had not at that 
time so many faithful followers in Jerusalem. St. Luke, 
indeed, confines the appearances of Jesus to Jerusalem 
and its environment; but that apparently is because 
he represents all Christ's manifestations as taking place 

1 Mark xiv: 28; Matthew xxvi: 32. 
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RELIGION AND LIFE 

on Easter Day, and he depicts the final ascension as 
occurring at Bethany on Sunday night. There was no 
time, therefore, for a withdrawal to Galilee. St. John, 
while describing the appearances as beginning at 
Jerusalem, in his twenty-first chapter has presented the 
reminiscence that the Disciples had returned to their 
home and their fishing, and represents the last appear- 
ance as taking place on the old familiar lake. Between 
these alternatives we cannot hesitate. The synoptic 
Gospels show not only that the Disciples were absent 
on the way to death and from the cross, but that they 
had scattered and fled. Matthew and Mark, our oldest 
Gospel sources, speak unqualifiedly for Galilee. The 
shifting of the scene to Jerusalem is already compre- 
hensible in St. Luke, who wished to conclude his story 
and to crowd the whole stupendous transaction into 
one day (although he was obliged to expand that day 
into forty days in the Acts of the Apostles). St. John's 
preference for Jerusalem we may regard as part of the 
general scheme of his Gospel. But that the appear- 
ances of Jesus having taken place at Jerusalem should 
afterward have been shifted to Galilee to satisfy no 
apparent motive is inconceivable. The plain fact that 
underlies the command of the angels is that the Dis- 
ciples had left Jerusalem and had returned to Galilee, 
where their meetings with Jesus took place. At all 
events, we must recognize that the same persons were 
not at the same time in both places, and, though we 
may not feel warranted in accepting St. Paul's list as 
the only genuine revelations to the exclusion of all 

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THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

others (e.g., that of Emmaus), yet we must recognize 
that this fact does cut deep into several of the detailed 
accounts of meetings in Jerusalem simply because 
the Apostles were not there. With this admission I 
feel myself excused from examining in detail the num- 
ber and order of Christ's appearances. St. Paul says 
expressly that the first revelation was made to Peter. 
With this St. Mark and St. Luke substantially agree. 
The duration of the appearances is also impossible to 
determine. St. Paul places his own vision of the Risen 
One, which occurred several years after the Crucifixion, 
on a parity with the other appearances. I do not know 
why the vision of Stephen, if it occurred as it is de- 
scribed in the Acts of the Apostles, should not be placed 
in the same category. As soon as we pass from the 
New Testament to Apocryphal literature we encounter 
a new series of grosser, more materialistic representa- 
tions which in some instances — e.g., the Gospel of Peter 
and that according to the Hebrews — may contain per- 
versions of good and ancient literature. 

2. The Character of the Appearances 

In regard to the nature of Christ's body we must 
admit that Christian tradition also wavers. The 
Gospels speak of his sudden appearance and disap- 
pearance, of his passing through closed doors. They 
admit that he was not recognized even by those to 
whom he revealed himself, and they do not once pretend 
that he was visible to the unbelieving world. The 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

pseudo conclusion of St. Mark asserts that he showed 
himself to the two who walked into the country "in 
another form." - Yet it is plain that in spite of these 
ancient traditions the Evangelists themselves con- 
ceived of Jesus as possessing a material or quasi-ma- 
terial body. Even in Matthew the women held him 
by the feet. St. Luke goes further in representing Jesus 
as possessing actual flesh and bones and as eating in the 
presence of his Disciples. St. John repeats these in- 
cidents. Moreover, the Gospels represent Jesus as 
talking and as holding long conversations with his 
Disciples, expounding the Scriptures, etc. It is here 
that the doctrine of the Resurrection weighs most 
heavily upon the conscience of educated men to-day. 
Here it becomes no glad reassurance of faith, but a 
burden which, if the heart accepts, the intellect rejects. 
Such a resurrection establishes no new bond of hope 
between Christ and the believer; it separates us from 
Christ, for we know well that no such fate is in store 
for us. To the common Jewish conception such a 
resurrection presented no difficulties. In fact, the only 
resurrection they could conceive of was a physical 
resurrection, a return to bodily life. If they believed 
Jesus to have risen at all, their belief eventually must 
have taken this form. Herod, when he heard of Jesus, 
imagined that it was John the Baptist risen from the 
dead, while the people took him for Moses or Elias or 
one of the prophets. But we judge differently. What- 
ever hope we have of an eternal life does not carry with 
it the resuscitation of this perishing frame with its 

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THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

material organs. My faith in the Resurrection of Jesus 
is not strengthened by the fact that he is described as 
able to eat, drink, show his wounds, sit, stand, and 
walk on weary feet. It is only embarrassed by these 
representations, since all these things belong to the old 
life which ends at death. It is our insistence on these 
material details that has awakened the suspicion and 
aversion of men and that has caused even believers to 
stumble. Moreover, no sooner do these writers find 
themselves with a material body on their hands than 
they are obliged to dematerialize it again, to pass with 
uncertain steps from eating and drinking and tangible 
contacts to invisibility and the suspension of resistance 
and gravity. Is this, then, the only alternative pre- 
sented to the believer — a material physical resurrection 
or open denial? We have yet to consider the oldest, 
the most philosophical conception of all, that of St. 
Paul in I Corinthians. 

In reading St. Paul's category of the Resurrection 
appearances of Jesus every reader must be struck by 
the sober, measured, parsimonious use of words, by 
the absence of all sensuous description, by the monot- 
onously repeated tofyOr) — "He was seen of Cephas, 
then of the Twelve" — and by the unhesitating placing 
of his own heavenly vision side by side with other ap- 
pearances of the Risen Lord. If it be said that this 
simple "he was seen" does not exclude other more 
material manifestations of the Lord's presence I must 
answer that it neither asserts them nor implies them. 
Most remarkable is it that Paul claims to have heard 

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no word spoken to him at the time of his heavenly 
vision, all important as such a message would have been 
to him. He says: "Am I not an Apostle? Have I 
not seen the Lord?" Why does he not add, "Did not 
Jesus himself call me his Apostle?" Only because he 
could not. Moreover, Paul is at great pains to explain 
to his readers in this very chapter his view of resurrec- 
tion and a resurrection body. He co-ordinates Christ's 
resurrection so closely with ours as to say Christ is not 
risen if so be that the dead rise not. He tells us that 
flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, 
neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. He 
asserts that the body that is sown is not that body that 
shall be. He establishes the strongest antitheses in 
language between the natural body which is laid in the 
ground and the spiritual body that shall live hereafter. 
By what train of thought did Paul come to these as- 
tonishingly original conclusions which differ from the 
doctrine of his Jewish masters no less strikingly than 
from the speculations of Grecian philosophers? Must 
it not have been in part at least by reflecting upon the 
death and new life of his Master, whose resurrection 
runs like a golden thread through this marvelous 
chapter? Or, rather, let us ask, could Paul have come 
to conclusions at utter variance with the known fate of 
Jesus and yet have imagined that he was a witness of 
Christ's resurrection? I, at all events, with a good con- 
science, take refuge in the great Apostle to the Gentiles, 
and, while believing in the reality of Christ's resurrec- 
tion, I believe that what rose victorious from the nether 

152 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

world was the spirit, that he himself in the fullness of his 
spiritual power triumphed over death and showed him- 
self alive after his resurrection. What became of his 
body I know not; no one knows. How many attempts 
have been made to account for its absence, without any 
permanent success! The one certain thing seems to 
be that it disappeared, neither friends nor foes knew 
how nor whither. St. Matthew tells us that the story 
was current in his day that the Disciples themselves 
had stolen the body. Psychologically this is impossible, 
but I can see no good reason for rejecting the statement, 
supported as it is in the second century by Justin 
Martyn, Tertullian, and the acts of Pilate. Even 
those persons who cannot bring themselves to dispense 
with a body altogether feel impelled to postulate so 
profound a metamorphosis that the material body is a 
material body no longer. Bishop Westcott seems to go 
further. In a private letter published April, 1904, in 
the Hibbert Journal he says, "If the body had remained, 
the idea of continuity would have been lost, and so 
through the action of God it passed away." 

How, then, are we to understand the appearances of 
Jesus after his death? In the first place, we must 
admit there is a large subjective element in all such 
presentations. That this is likewise true of the ap- 
pearances of Jesus is proved by the single fact that he 
was not seen by all nor by a single indifferent person. 
He showed himself alive to certain chosen witnesses. 
This one circumstance says everything. If it had been 
the will of God to gain the consent of the world a single 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

appearance to Pontius Pilate or to Caiaphas would have 
sufficed . The good faith of the Disciples has never 
been called in question. The profound and permanent 
change that took place in them during the weeks follow- 
ing the crucifixion, together with their own candid and 
earnest assertions on which they were ready at all times 
to stake their lives, have convinced the world of the 
sincerity of their belief. In other words, during those 
days something happened, something sufficiently im- 
portant not only to change them for life, but to serve 
as the source of unnumbered inspirations to mankind 
and as the foundation-stone of a world-conquering 
religion. What was it? 

I must remind you, in the first place, that resurrec- 
tions from the dead are not included among the acts 
required by popular faith of founders of religion. 
Renan tells us, indeed, that heroes do not die, meaning 
that their friends do not allow them to die. He reminds 
us that after the death of Rabbi Judas the Holy his 
fellow-citizens promised death to any one who pro- 
nounced their teacher dead; and, more to the point, 
when Mohammed breathed his last the fiery Omar stood 
at the door of his house with drawn sword, swearing to 
strike off the head of any one who presumed to say 
that the prophet was no more. Granted: and yet 
neither of these men rose from the dead. If the love 
and faith of disciples are the powerful means of the 
resuscitation of the founders of religion, why is it that 
among them all Jesus alone is said to have risen? 
Among the adoring multitudes that followed Buddha 

154 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

and Zoroaster, not to speak of Mohammed's hosts, was 
there not as much faith as could be furnished by the 
little handful of timid and demoralized Christian be- 
lievers? Here we are in a position to speak decisively. 
No one dreamed of reanimating Mohammed. Zoroas- 
ter's second coming is still expected by the Parsees 
of Bombay, but no tradition of his resurrection ever 
arose. Of the dead Buddha his disciples could only 
say, "He is like the sun set behind the Astigari Moun- 
tains. We cannot say of him that he is here or there, but 
we can point him out in the discourses he delivered to 
us; in them he still lives." Even the Jews, so far as I 
am aware, entertained no belief of the resurrection of 
Messiah. In this respect Jesus stands alone, and his 
resurrection cannot be explained psychologically by a 
preconceived idea of what he ought to do or by any 
image suggested by the Old Testament. Here we are 
dealing with real, living faith and with contemporary 
evidence. 

Yet there is a world, as Keim reminds us, of mental 
facts, especially in the domain of religion, that awakens 
in men strange convictions and inspirations. Long 
before Strauss and Renan, Celsus proposed this expla- 
nation of the resurrection and referred it to the hallu- 
cinations of Mary Magdalene. Psychologically it is 
not impossible that constant brooding on the memory 
of Jesus should have given rise to visual representations 
which were like him and yet were not like him. How 
often have we been confronted by such apparitions of 
our own dead! How easy it is to see them coming to 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

us on the crowded street, entering a door, seated in 
their old places. Healthy minds distinguish, of course, 
between actual objects of sensation and visions which 
are wholly subjective. Hence it is necessary for Renan 
and also for Schmiedel to assume that the Disciples 
were in a condition of excitement bordering on ecstasy. 
The glance we can gain into their condition, however, 
tells us of doubt and depression bordering on despair. 
Nor can I believe that their helplessness, their dejec- 
tion, the utter paralysis caused by Jesus' death, and 
their own wretched cowardice could have been at once 
and forever converted into such triumphant faith and 
exalted energy by their own unaided musings, even were 
their thoughts in one or two instances objectified into 
optical hallucinations. Further, as Keim reminds us, it 
is notorious that these states of mind are contagious. 
The exuberance of excitement which generates ocular 
hallucination demands a considerable time. One person 
excites another. The appearances are repeated until 
every one has enjoyed the experience and has seen 
something. The visionary enthusiasm of the Montan- 
ists persisted for half a century. Renan feels obliged 
to postulate a full year of uninterrupted vision and 
feverish intoxication. But the oldest Christian tradi- 
tion, dating hardly five years from the event, enumer- 
ates exactly five appearances, excluding St. Paul's 
and two to the same group. What a contradiction to 
the demands of the theory of high-swollen enthusiasm ! 
Just when ardent minds ought to be growing fanatical 
the fanaticism entirely ceases. How great are the diffi- 

156 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

culties ! Moreover, we note something strange, foreign, 
remote in these appearances of Jesus which does not 
look as if they were the creation of the minds which 
found so much difficulty in believing them. 

Holzmann endeavors to obviate the necessity of popu- 
lar enthusiasm by supposing that the visions followed 
in each instance the suggestion of Jesus that he would 
rise again on the third day. Hypnotism has taught 
us the power of suggestion. The patient is informed 
that at a certain day and hour an object will appear; 
and in due course it is seen. This is really too slight 
a thread on which to hang the faith of a world, and, 
moreover, what suggestion was made to St. Paul? 
St. Paul's conversion alone is the fatal objection to the 
hypothesis of subjective visions. What subjective 
state would have revealed to him the Saviour in 
heavenly glory at the moment when he was snorting 
like a war-horse with zeal to destroy Christ's followers? 
Thus it appears that it is easier to challenge the truth 
of Christ's resurrection than it is to disprove it or even 
to account for men's belief in it. 

Is there, then, no way of escape, inward or outward, or 
must we remain in a purely agnostic and skeptical 
frame of mind? There is, I believe, a way not as yet 
considered by scholars and critics, because it lies out- 
side the sphere of criticism in the domain of reality and 
nature and because it is mysterious. Yet it is a way 
that many are destined to take when they discover 
that there is no other way to a firm belief. Fifty years 
ago hardly a man whose beliefs were formed by reason 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

had any faith in the miracles of Christ recorded in the 
Bible. To-day men of science are willing to accept the 
majority of such miracles. How has this important 
change come about? By co-ordinating these cures, 
these expulsions of demons with similar phenomena 
around us which we can study and control. Obviously, 
the one simple, reasonable, satisfying solution to the 
resurrection problem is that Jesus after death appeared 
to his Disciples and convinced them that he was yet 
alive. The one reason why men of science refuse to 
accept this simple explanation is because they regard 
it as a miracle and because they have already convinced 
themselves that miracles do not happen. For cen- 
turies we have proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus to 
be a solitary, unique experience, without a counterpart 
in the experience of man. But the more unique an 
experience is made, the less disposed men are to receive 
it, because such an experience cannot be brought 
within the domain of universal law. Bring this event, 
however, within the domain of a possible experience, 
however infrequent, and if it is supported by good 
evidence it will be accepted. This has been the his- 
tory of other miracles of Christ which, once derided, are 
now respected. It will be the history of this supreme 
miracle. To tell the truth, we have followed the 
critical labyrinth about as far as it will take us. In 
itself it is insufficient to bring us to living faith in a 
Risen Saviour. What we want now, while holding fast 
to our Christian tradition, is to gain entrance to the 
vast orderly world of God's spiritual laws before we 

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THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

assert what can or cannot happen there. I cannot for- 
bear quoting here the well-known words of Frederick 
Myers. "I venture now on a bold saying; for I pre- 
dict that in consequence of the new evidence all reason- 
able men a century hence will believe in the resurrection 
of Christ, whereas in default of the new evidence no 
reasonable men a century hence would have believed 
it." I have no doubt that this suggestion will prove un- 
acceptable at first to the majority of believers, who will 
say this is to cheapen the resurrection of Christ; it is 
to place it on a par with the miserable chicaneries of 
spiritualists. Yet the fact that almost every science 
began in chicanery and superstition ought not to preju- 
dice men against it after it has delivered itself from its 
youthful follies. It is so in the domain of the spiritual, 
with respect to the relation of the dead to the living. 
Amid much deception and fraud most impartial investi- 
gators have convinced themselves that veritable mani- 
festations from beyond the grave are sometimes given 
us. The central truth of the Christian religion thereby 
receives a support which it heretofore lacked. Nor do I 
for a moment compare the importance of Christ's self- 
revelation or the value of his proof of victory over death 
with the appearances investigated and approved by the 
Society for Psychical Research. The value of Christ's 
revelation exceeds those of other men in the same propor- 
tion that his personality exceeds theirs. The value of 
Christ's resurrection is not merely that some human 
being showed himself alive after death, but that he, the 
Captain of our salvation, triumphed over death and all 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

the terrors of the nether world, and that the providence 
of God, which seemed set at naught by the Cross, was 
established. On that victory of his, and not on the 
hopes and conjectures of the philosophers, our faith in 
our own immortality chiefly rests. If it be said, this, 
after all, is no resurrection, I reply that such an objec- 
tion rests on an inadequate conception of the nature 
of the spiritual body. A deeper analysis will show it 
growing out of the life of the old body, according to 
St. Paul's figure, as the plant grows out of the seed. At 
all events, how slight are these difficulties in comparison 
with those which beset us in every other direction. 
On this hypothesis, how comprehensible become the 
appearances immediately following death and their 
abrupt cessation, the sudden appearing and disappear- 
ing, the passing through closed doors, the traumatic 
stigmata, the fact that he was seen only by those who 
already knew and loved him and were thinking of him, 
above all, the few definite, numbered, well-remembered 
manifestations, so different from the loose, unnumbered 
creations of popular enthusiasm. 

There is one general remark I wish to make at the 
end of this long discussion. It is, as a rule, the disposi- 
tion of historical and critical scholars to make the truth 
and reality of the resurrection of Christ hang solely on 
the evidence of the conflicting records of the New 
Testament. By demolishing or weakening that evi- 
dence they assume that they have disposed of the fact. 
Is this, after all, a warrantable assumption? Must not 
the acknowledged faith of contemporaries, of those who 

160 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 

knew him best, also count for something? Hannibal's 
passage of the Alps, to use a time-honored comparison, 
is described in a very different manner by Livy and by 
Polybius. And yet we believe in the fact because at 
one time we know Hannibal to have been on one side 
of the Alps, and the impression produced upon his 
contemporaries, preserved by history, convinces us that 
at a later time he was on the other side. May not the 
same argument be used in favor of the resurrection of 
Jesus? Schmiedel denies it on the ground that the 
actuality of Christ's resurrection depends upon the 
very narrations called in question; but I believe that 
apart from I Corinthians, the two Marks, Matthew, 
etc., we have a witness in the personal faith and changed 
lives of Christ's personal friends in the introduction of a 
new force that lifted the world out of its old courses and 
that persists to the present time. A greater set of 
events was set in motion than Hannibal inaugurated in 
Italy. Men accustomed to measure causes by effects 
will agree that something happened. Was not this 
what Jesus counted on when he said, "I have a greater 
witness than that of John." In other words, is not the 
Christian consciousness and experience an independent 
witness of almost equal weight with any historical 
record? 

We have been accustomed to regard the resurrection 
of the body of the Crucified as the assured truth of the 
resurrection, and, as Hausrath says, we have attempted 
to establish the world-conquering power of his Gospel 
on that one fact, a fact always exposed to doubt. 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

But faith in the Risen, Living Lord ought to be based 
on spiritual certainties which cannot be doubted. 
And it may be that God has allowed many of the old 
external props to be shaken only to drive us to lean 
more absolutely on the rock that cannot be shaken, the 
whole Personality of Jesus Christ. That Personality 
which contained within it life for a world had nothing 
to fear from death. Without the resurrection truth, 
without the living Jesus, his faith long since would 
have disappeared from the earth. The greatest of 
men would have come and would have left no trace 
behind. The gold of his words would have been 
buried in the dust of oblivion. For a while Galilee 
and the Apostles would have preserved some fact and 
some fiction in regard to him. But there would have 
been no St. Paul, no Church, no new humanity. But, 
being what he was, we speak only words of sober truth 
when we say that he could not be holden of death, that 
time and forgetfulness of the grave could not dim the 
brightness of his personality. 1 The evidence that 
Jesus lived was necessary to those who were smitten 
down by the spectacle of the Cross. And God gave 
them evidence sufficient for their need. That which 
was temporal in the conception of the resurrection sus- 
tained the Church in its agony. That which is eternal 
remains for us. 

1 New Testament Times. 



Part III 

THE PERSONAL LIFE 



THE POWER OF FAITH 

As it is written, The just shall live by faith. — Romans i: 17. 

NO words spoken by Christ are stranger than his 
words in regard to faith. It is plain he meant by 
faith something quite different from what we mean by 
it. What Jesus seems to have meant is contact with 
some power which is capable of increasing incalculably 
the effectiveness of our life, a power that is able to lift 
us to new courses and that can enable us to do what 
we formerly were unable to do. It is as if a man had 
arisen in the olden time when men carried their bur- 
dens on their backs or on the bunches of camels and the 
brightest light was a tallow-candle, and by practical 
demonstration had shown them how their burdens and 
they themselves might be carried swiftly and without 
effort by some hitherto unknown energy and their night 
be turned into day. And this seems to be just what 
Jesus meant. He had discovered a power which had 
lifted him far above the plane of our mortal weakness, 
and he believed he could communicate that secret to us. 
In the face of Jesus' life and the lives of his saints 
why should we doubt this? We know to-day that 
mechanical energies are not the only energies of this 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

great universe. God is a Spirit, and what His mechan- 
ical forces accomplish in the material world the power 
of His Spirit can accomplish in the spiritual world. 
But first we must learn how to obtain the co-operation 
of that Spirit. The law seems to be this: Before we 
can make use of the Spirit of God to purify and 
strengthen our lives some vital and personal contact 
between God and our soul is necessary, and in that 
contact the surrender of our will to His will takes 
place. 

The electric energy we use so freely was appar- 
ently always as widely diffused through space as it 
is now. Men saw it in the lightning and in the 
feeble attraction of amber. But before that energy 
was of any use to them they had to learn to bring it 
down to earth and to generate it as they needed it. 
So it is with the Spirit of God. In order to gain the 
incalculable help God is able to render us it is necessary 
to establish a direct personal contact between our souls 
and God's Spirit — a contact which can be established 
only by the surrender of our will to His will and by 
faith and prayer. Faith is the opening of a door 
between our soul and God. Closed, it can keep God out: 
open, it can let Him in. And the measure of our faith 
alone determines the measure in which the Spirit of God 
is poured out on us. This it is, and nothing else. 
There is no niggardliness, no poverty, and no favorit- 
ism in God. His riches surpass all our capacity to 
receive. Our deficiency lies only in ourselves, in our 
lack of faith, in our unwillingness to surrender to Him, 

166 






THE POWER OF FAITH 

Consider the wonderful work of reclamation now 
going on in our Western country. On the one side is 
the barren desert, consisting only of shifting sand and 
worthless sage-brush. On the other side are green 
pastures, smiling orchards, fertile fields. The soil is the 
same, the climate is the same. What has caused the 
wonderful transformation? A contact has been estab- 
lished. The gates are open. The waters which were 
always there, but which used to run from the moun- 
tains to the sea, are now brought into vital contact 
with the parched and barren earth. And where there 
was only death, now there is life. An old German in 
Wyoming once said to me, "All that hell needs is a 
little water to make it comfortable." 

But how are we to come into this contact with the 
Spirit of God? First, let us remember that God can 
reveal Himself without any help from us, but He cannot 
take possession of our hearts without help from us. 
He enters our life overwhelmingly, if only for a brief 
period, just as the lightning flashes across the sky or 
the flood pours dow T n the mountains. Every one of us, 
I presume, has had some such experience as this, when 
as children the sense of awe or mystery or guilt or 
rapture dawned in us, and we began to pray; or when 
we looked out into the star-lit depths of heaven and 
from that time realized that this earth is not our only 
home; or in moments of great weakness, when all 
earthly things seemed slipping away, and suddenly 
we found beneath us and around us the Everlasting 
Arms; or in the accusations of conscience; or in some 

107 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

great blessing we have obtained from God, and we have 
said in the silence of the night, in the solitude of our 
heart, "If I am not happy now I shall never be happy." 
Or we have prayed and He has heard our prayer, and 
the inevitable has not happened and the impossible has 
been granted us; or in the mystery of love, in which if 
only for a little while our life has been transfigured and 
a new heaven shone upon a new earth. For a few days, 
for a few hours, we have stood before God, we have 
realized God, and, though the splendor of that light has 
grown dim, something has lingered. Life has never 
been quite the same. It is as if men groping in thick 
darkness were suddenly illumined by a flash of lightning 
from on high, saw the splendor of the world and the 
pitfalls that surround their path, and, though the dark- 
ness returned, yet they did not wholly forget what the 
light had revealed. 

But what we want is not the brief, intermittent 
flashes of God's lightnings, but the light and warmth 
of His sun, His constant presence in our heart. When 
God enters a man's life he knows it, and when God's 
spirit leaves a man he knows it. Some men do not 
attempt to draw near to God because they do not 
believe in God. They think either that there is no 
God or that God is a mere name in a book — a blind, 
unintelligent deity, another name for the unchanging 
laws of nature. What, then, is your life? What is its 
sustaining thought for the present, and its hope for the 
future? It was the lack of this support which made 
Tolstoy wish to hang himself, though possessing all 

168 



THE POWER OF FAITH 

that this world could give him, and which caused James 
Thomson to write: 

The world rolls on forever like a mill; 

It grinds out death and life and good and ill; 

It has no conscience, heart or mind or will. 

I believe, however, that a far greater number of men 
do not draw near to God because they do not want 
what God can give them, and because they fear what 
God will demand of them. What is the reason that 
we do not always live in the felt presence of God? Why 
is God not always present in our hearts? It is because 
we cannot, dare not, will not make the necessary 
surrender that would keep Him there. We do not 
wish to banish God altogether from our lives, or to 
invite the hosts of hell to make their home with us. 
We know how to judge bad men and bad women as 
well as another. We love the good, and many things 
are good in our lives. Many of our relations \fith our 
fellow-men are sound, sweet, pure, helpful, so that they 
could hardly be improved upon. But there are other 
relations which are far otherwise. There may be 
persons whose very existence on the earth is a reproach 
to us. There are thoughts, desires, deeds, and habits 
which we do not wish to bring into God's sight nor into 
the sight of those who love us. So there arises a pain- 
ful lack of harmony in our lives, a profound cleft seems 
to run to the depths of our being. We feel ourselves 
drawn in opposite directions, rejoicing in the higher 

law of our minds, but conscious ever of another law in 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

our members which brings us into subjection to the law 
of sin. Now we are carried away by high hopes and 
noble purposes. Now we put them from us and live as 
if they did not exist, and fall into sin and despondency. 
And what discourages us most is that we do not believe 
we could free ourselves from this if we tried. Try? 
God knows how many times we have tried, how earnestly 
we have vowed, and how miserably we have failed. 
Luther's friend Staupitz says: "I have vowed to God 
a thousand times that I would amend my life and be 
a better man; and I have never kept one of my vows. 
Now I will vow no more, since I cannot perform it. 
Unless God show mercy upon me for Christ's sake I 
cannot appear before Him." 

Perhaps no one has ever described this divided will 
with such psychological insight as St. Augustine: "The 
new will I began to have was not yet strong enough to 
overcome that other will strengthened by long indul- 
gence. So these two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, 
and the other spiritual, contended with each other, and 
disturbed my peace. Still bound to earth, I refuse, 
O God, to fight on Thy side, as much afraid to be freed 
from all bonds as I ought to have been afraid to be 
trammeled by them. There was naught in me to 
answer thy call, 'Awake, thou sleeper!' but only 
drawling, drowsy words — 'Presently, yes, presently, 
wait a little while'; but the presently had no present, 
and the little while grew long. I said within myself, 
'I will do it,' and as I said it I was on the point of the 
resolve; I all but did it; yet I did it not. And I made 

17Q 



THE POWER OF FAITH 

another effort and all but succeeded; yet I did not 
reach it and did not grasp it, hesitating to die to death 
and to live to life, and the evil to which I was so 
rooted held me more than the better life I had not 
tried." 

Could any description be more perfect? But after 
all, you say, what can it matter? If the struggle be 
so hard, even if a man by one mighty effort of his will 
make the supreme renunciation, cut himself loose from 
all that impedes him, and set his face in the right 
direction, how soon the power of old evil and habit will 
reassert itself, the enthusiasm will flag, and the old life 
will return! If there were no God, no mighty power 
standing beside us ready to take us up when our feeble 
strength failed and our struggling had ceased, this 
would be true for most of us, and the task forever 
impossible. But the experience of millions of men and 
women testifies that there is such a power, able and 
willing to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. 
With me this is no matter of faith or of opinion; I have 
seen it take place too often. It is the experience of 
myriads of trusting souls that this sense of God's 
constant presence is a source of absolute repose, of new 
purity and spiritual strength. Only to obtain the help 
of that power this one question must be settled, Do we 
desire it? Would we give up our sins if we could? 
Are we willing to make our will one with God to this ex- 
tent, that we no longer purpose to go on in our sin; that 
we no longer plan for it, tolerate it, make a place for it 
in our lives; that we are willing to make no provision for 

171 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

the flesh to fulfil its lusts? It is this surrender of 
ourselves that is all-important, the giving up of our 
will to God's will, for it establishes the vital contact 
by which the Divine Spirit can act on us. It is like 
the percussion-cap or primer which discharges the 
cannon. That feeble spark cannot hurl the mighty 
missile, but it can release the energy which is able 
to do so. And that act of surrender is the end of our 
sin. Since our sin consisted only in the opposition of 
our will to God's will the withdrawal of our opposition 
sets us free, and so far as God is concerned our sin 
becomes as if it had never been. It is like some great 
tree that has fallen across a mighty river. As long as it 
is fixed there, there is friction, there is opposition. 
The stream bears heavily on the tree, and the tree 
resists the action of the river. But when the roots 
that held the tree in place are broken or undermined 
all friction and opposition ends and the tree floats 
peacefully on the current. So the will of God bears 
heavily on us, not that it may destroy us, but that it 
may break or undermine the evil which would destroy 
us. As long as we resist there is friction, there is oppo- 
sition and enmity; but when our will yields to God's 
will all enmity, all opposition ends. Hence God is able 
to make the wonderful promises contained in the 
Scriptures: "I will blot out their transgressions and 
remember them no more forever." "Though their sins 
be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." As far 
as the east is from the west, so far hath He set our sins 
from us. The surrender of our will sets us free, be- 

172 



THE POWER OF FAITH 

cause then the opposition is ended and we are one with 
God. His power enters into us and transforms us into 
His likeness. 

At last for St. Augustine that day dawned; after 
saying, "To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow," 
he awoke at last and said, "Why not to-day; why not 
at once make an end of the matter?" and the battle 
was won. It is like the supreme surrender of love, 
which admits us at last to all knowledge and to all joy. 
At that moment a new perception dawns on a man. 
In some inscrutable manner he perceives that that which 
he thought to be impossible is possible. He feels that 
God is able to do it, and as soon as he feels it to be 
possible it becomes possible. In that moment the 
chains which bound him may be broken, the thing he 
most dreaded may simply cease and come to an end in 
his life forever. Or it may not cease all at once. It may 
continue, and yet never again with the same power; 
and, though he fall, yet like an eager and courageous 
runner he will rise again and press on until he has gained 
the goal. That is the real meaning of the great doc- 
trine of justification by faith, not that God ascribes to 
us by a process of bookkeeping what is not ours, but the 
perception of faith that God is able to do for us what 
we cannot do for ourselves, the consciousness of the 
possibility of deliverance which brings deliverance. 

In all this I do not pretend that persons so guarded 
and guided by God are sheltered from all dangers and 
temptations of this life or that they can expect a pro- 
tection which is denied others. God has no favorites, 

173 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

and if He had I should not care to be one of them. 
The laws which are good enough for the rest of man- 
kind are good enough for me. "Whatever is fit for 
thee, earth, is fit for me/ 5 But I do solemnly affirm 
that the worst evils of this life — fear, cowardice, despair, 
self-contempt, the terrors of conscience, and the hiding 
of God's face — are not for them. "I have given my- 
self to the service of God," said Hillel the Jew; "no cry 
of despair shall proceed from my house." I know that 
for our earthly life we need earthly prudence and calcu- 
lation; but beyond all our prudence and calculation lies 
the vast, dim, incalculable future, where only one 
calculation holds — trust in Him to whom nothing is 
unforeseen or unexpected. 

Lover divine and perfect Comrade, 
Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain, 
Be Thou my God. 



II 

THE VALUE OF LIFE 

For what is your life? — St. James iv: 14. 

WHAT is the use of asking this question? As if I 
knew, as if you knew, as if any one knew! 
Ask what life is, and we must reply, as St. Augustine 
did to some one who asked him what time is, "If you 
had not asked me I might have told you, but since you 
ask the question I must confess that I do not know." 

Yet this is a question which asks itself. For what 
have the best and wisest men always thought about? 
What is the end to which their studies and speculations 
and researches always tend, and never quite attain, 
but the old riddle of the Sphinx — the meaning of life? 
We read their writings and strive to attain their wisdom, 
hoping always to learn something more about life. 
And we do learn something. But from the depths of 
our being arises another question which they cannot 
answer — not "What is life in the abstract?" but 
"What is my life?" What is that palpitating thing 
within me of which I alone am conscious and which is 
the source of all the joy and sorrow, the bright hope 
and deep disappointment, the love, the hate, the 
memories, the inward sadness, the acts, the fate and 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

destiny that make up my individual existence? Can 
another man tell me what that is? Nay. Can I tell 
myself? Shall I ever see it as it is? Shall I ever gain 
the clue to its labyrinth or unravel its tangled and 
broken threads and see my life simplified, luminous, and 
transparent; or must I go on stumbling in the dark, 
blind and erring to the end? 

I know that there are men and women to whom these 
questions do not seem to occur at all, human beings 
in form, sleek cattle in mind, w T ho appear to be born 
only to consume the crops and to pasture and grow fat 
upon the shows of life. But with even them this bovine 
indifference is not constant, and with almost all it is 
more apparent than real. I have been permitted an 
insight into individual consciences and lives which few 
men have had, and I may speak of life not as one who is 
beguiled by illusions or as the dupe of society and its 
artificialities, and I know that even the most placid 
and conventional people who make our world are not as 
placid or as conventional as they seem to be. Some- 
times they hear the rolling thunder that precedes the 
breaking storm; sometimes they feel the solid earth 
fluid and palpitating beneath their feet; sometimes 
they feel volcanic fires of passion burning and consum- 
ing within, ready to overflow and pour desolation over 
their life. They are trained. They are people of the 
world, and they give no sign but smile on, though 
within the heart is shuddering with mortal fear or con- 
vulsed by pain. Life is dark, mysterious, incompre- 
hensible, but it is greater in good and evil, more mov- 

176 



THE VALUE OF LIFE 

ing in its tragedy, more amusing in its comedy than 
it seems. 

For what is your life? In its duration a vapor, in its 
content a dream. Perhaps the whole of our life is but a 
dream of God's. Who has not been struck by the 
dream-like character of life, with its strange, incon- 
gruous happenings, its abrupt changes, its magical 
transformations, its recurrent images, its oblivions and 
poignant memories, its essential loneliness? We may 
live constantly with the one who is dearest to us, but 
each lives in his own dream. How little do we know 
of the fundamental facts of the other's existence, how 
seldom do we reveal ourselves or speak of that which is 
most personal, most vital to us ! It is not that we are 
unwilling or that we wish to conceal, but that we de- 
spair of speaking so as to be understood. 

Nay, be assured no secret can be told 
To any who divined it not before. 

Sometimes as I look back over my own life with all its 
tasks, studies, relations, experiences, especially when I 
think of the thousands of persons, many of them so 
much loved, with whom I have been brought into 
contact, whose lives and personalities were once so real 
and so near and now are so remote and so shadowy, it 
seems to me exactly like a dream — wonderful beyond all 
words, but vanishing. 

Again ye come, ye hovering forms, I find you 
As early to my clouded sight ye shone. 

Shall I attempt this once to seize and bind you? 
Still o'er my heart is that illusion thrown? 

12 177 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

Ye crowd more near, then be the reign assigned you 
And sway me from your misty, shadowy zone. 

My bosom thrills with youthful passion shaken 
By magic airs which round your march awaken. 

Of happy days ye bring the blissful vision, 

The dear, familiar faces rise again. 
And like an old and half -extinct tradition 

First love returns with friendship in his train. 
Renewed is pain, with mournful repetition 

Life tracks his devious labyrinthine chain. 
And names the good whose cheating fortunes tore them 

From happy hours and left me to deplore them. 

And grasps me now a long unwonted yearning 

For that serene and solemn spirit land. 
My heart to faint seolian measures turning 

Sways like a harp-string by the breezes fanned. 
I thrill and tremble, tear on tear is burning, 

And the stern heart is tenderly unmanned. 
What I possess I see far distant lying, 

And what I lost grows real and undying. 

But to say that life is like a dream does not make it 
any more unreal, for we have learned that dreams are 
one of the most poetic and significant factors of life. 
It only shows once more that our real life is within and 
that unless our broken, fragmentary, purposeless lives 
are parts of a greater whole and of a more enduring 
purpose — the mind of God — they are naught. 

For who can say whether his own life, on the whole, 
has been good or evil, happy or unhappy? If Christ 
forbade men to call him good, what shall we say? Have 
we any scale on which to weigh the one against the 

178 



THE VALUE OF LIFE 

other, or is it a mere question of quantity, or frequency, 
or duration? Sometimes one evil deed to which the soul 
may have been a perfect stranger appears to wreck a 
life. And yet does it really wreck it? Can I believe 
that the soul made in the Image of God is so weak? 
Perhaps the time will come when we shall see that that 
downfall was the necessary step to some great progress. 
For a world in which evil served no good, a world in 
which man gained nothing and learned nothing from the 
sin and evil he did not create, but which he must en- 
counter, would be a world beyond redemption, too vile 
a world for Christ to die for or for a Christian to live 
in. As St. Augustine says, "If it were not good that 
there should be evil, evil would not have been per- 
mitted by omnipotent Goodness." 

Sometimes one shining act redeems a life and lifts a 
man above his past. From a man from whom we 
little expect it comes a deed of touching kindness, or a 
cool, heroic surrender of life itself for another, by which 
he offers an atonement for his soul. Or a being appar- 
ently all evil undergoes some mighty change in the 
course of which the old vile self is swallowed up and a 
new and wonderful self is born. Several years ago a 
man of force and education came to me to pour into 
my ears the story of his complete ruin and downfall. 
I sat in silence for two hours listening to his terrible 
revelations, and as I listened I kept wondering: Is there 
any sound thing in you? Is there any relation of life you 
have not betrayed and ruined? Then some new state- 
ment would sweep away my half-formed hope. At last 

179 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

he paused and asked me, "What can you make of that?" 
I replied, "I see two things. The first, of course, is 
suicide. You must often have thought of it. You can- 
not bear this burden much longer. You have been 
throwing life away with both hands, and now life itself 
is casting you off. You may go on for a month or six 
weeks, but I do not think you can bear it much longer." 
He sighed and said, "What else do you see?" I said, 
"I see God. Did it ever occur to you that He might 
save you?" His face took on that stony, expressionless 
appearance which many men assume when one men- 
tions the name of God, and he said, "I can't follow you; 
I don't know what you are talking about." I said, 
"That is not true; you know what I mean." He 
said, "Once or twice in my life it has come to me as in a 
dream that God might save me." I said, "Would you 
accept God's help if He offered it to you?" and he re- 
plied, "I would." I said, "Will you ask for it?" and, 
throwing himself on his knees, he sobbed out a few 
broken-hearted words of prayer, and, covering his face 
with his hands, he knelt in silence for perhaps five 
minutes. When he rose he looked at me and I saw 
something in his face which was not there before. He 
said, very quietly, "God has heard my prayer, and I am 
saved." If the Lord Christ had entered the room 
visibly and, laying his hand on that man's head, had 
said, "I will; be thou clean," I do not believe that the 
change would have been profounder or more immediate. 
The vice and evil which had desolated his life simply 
ceased, and in their place a character of such purity, 

180 



THE VALUE OF LIFE 

sweetness, and unselfishness was born that I cannot 
speak of it without shame for myself. 

If that man had died five years ago he would have 
died an abandoned sinner. His life would have been 
rightly regarded as a failure and a curse. Should he 
die to-night he would die as the child of God, and his 
life has been a glorious victory. But this good self was 
not created out of nothing in that moment. It was 
there, only asleep, crushed and buried under a moun- 
tain of evil. And w-hat gave him his new life was that, 
saved himself, his first thought was to save others. 
He gave himself to goodness with as much enthusiasm 
as he had given himself to evil. 

Or consider happiness. Is the amount of happiness 
we have enjoyed any test of the value of life? Can any 
of us be sure that we have enjoyed more than we have 
suffered in our life on earth, or do we often know when 
we are happy at the time? Should any of us be willing 
to live our whole life over again exactly as it was, 
merely for the sake of repeating its pleasures? Or 
could we select ten years of it, five years, one year, that 
we should like to repeat? Probably few persons could 
be found willing to live again a month of life for any 
other reason than to avoid their sins and errors, or to 
learn the lessons they had failed to learn. On the other 
hand, can we not see, in looking back, how much we 
owe to parts of our life which were hard and unhappy, 
when we were driven back upon ourselves and in sorrow 
and solitude we amassed a moral capital that we have 
drawn on ever since? 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, 
Who ne'er the lonely midnight hours 

Weeping upon his bed hath sat, 

He knows you not, ye heavenly powers. 

Oscar Wilde tells us that his mother once showed him 
those sacred lines of Goethe's translated by Thomas 
Carlyle and written by Carlyle's hand and that he 
obstinately refused to recognize any truth in them. 
"To learn that lesson," says Wilde, "I was obliged 
to go to prison, but it was worth going to prison for." 

If I am unhappy, is that any reason why I should 
hate my life? Is it not still within my power to make 
others happy and to give them strength? And can 
I do this without finding true happiness? If I am 
unhappy, is that a reason why I should end my life? 
Not unless God has revealed to me in a vision that my 
continued existence can bring no blessing to any human 
being, and that it is forever beyond my power to do a 
good act; otherwise I have no right to end it and to leave 
that good undone. The happiness'or the unhappiness of 
life is a very imperfect criterion of its value or useful- 
ness. Many who sow in tears reap in joy. Many a 
thing pleases us well at first which does not please us 
afterward when it has become a permanent part of our 
memories. We judge it then by a different standard, 
not with reference to a momentary happiness, but to 
life as a whole. So many a first becomes last, and the 
last first. 

But good or evil, happy or unhappy, life possesses 
certain things for which every man who has had them is 

182 



THE VALUE OF LIFE 

grateful. There are some things in this world which 
are of value for their own sake. Knowledge is one of 
these things. After the service of God and humanity 
it is the most rational passion known to man. Or, as 
Goethe said, "After a good conscience and good health, 
knowledge is the best thing in the world." To be alive 
to such a world as this, which, apart from man, is 
certainly a credit to its Creator, to tread the path 
humanity has trod, to come into contact with the 
great spirits of the past, to know those truths which 
alone make life a blessing — this is for man a good, a 
solace, a source of delight to be thankful for. This 
world presents to us problems of the highest order. 
It could furnish worthy employment for minds as 
superior to ours as the mind of a Newton is superior 
to that of a Bushman. No matter whether we look 
at nature or humanity, to the seeing eye it is always 
beautiful, always full of new and charming mystery. 
Armed with this one thought, we can make a noble 
and a worthy use of life. 

Experience is also a good. The mysterious and 
profound writer of the second chapter of Genesis gave 
us the picture of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good 
and Evil. Apparently one is inseparable from the 
other. Man cannot know good without knowing evil, 
and he cannot do good without the possibility of doing 
evil. So the tragedy of human life, the element of 
evil, sin, suffering and deliverance, fall and rising again, 
are all given. Life presents itself to us as something 
to be attained, something to struggle against, and in 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

that struggle our will is born. It is man's destiny to 
traverse the earth, to come into contact with every 
form of reality, to wrestle with evil and to be purified 
by suffering. Without this his soul would only sleep 
as the plants sleep. Life imposes on us certain virtues 
as the condition of our existence and well-being. It 
brings us into relations with other human beings, and 
in those relations we are born again. Who would be 
without this experience? Whatever his mistakes, how- 
ever terrific the tragedy of it, who would cut the ties 
that bind him to humanity, or obliterate the memories 
of his life? I have asked many persons this question — 
sad persons, sunken persons, persons who had wan- 
dered widely from the right way — whether, if they could, 
they would forget the past and the lessons life has 
taught them. But I have found no man or woman so 
abject as to be willing to part with the experiences they 
had gained by living, however fearful the price they had 
paid for it. 

Love is another good life holds for men — perhaps the 
greatest good, and he who has truly loved cannot 
accuse life very severely. If his love has been truly 
requited he need ask this earth for nothing more. If 
it has not been requited, nevertheless he has had it. 
He has felt its transforming power; through it he has 
touched the infinite. His eyes have beheld the mys- 
tery. His heart is awake to a thousand tender and 
holy things which the man who has never loved does 
not know. His life may be sad, but it is beautiful. 
It is an immense good to have known Jesus Christ 

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THE VALUE OF LIFE 

and to have learned from him what life is and what 
love is. 

God is the chief Good life contains, for this Good in- 
cludes all other goods. To know God, to love God — is 
not that the sum of all joy, of all peace, and of all 
knowledge, the open door to the infinite and eternal 
world of the Spirit? If these things are true, life can- 
not be essentially evil, and we should beware of blas- 
pheming the infinite Goodness that gave us life, by pro- 
nouncing it such. If we have had these things, or any 
of them, a thousand years of gratitude and service 
would not sufficiently pay our obligation to the Giver. 
For my own part, I confess, I have found life good, 
and I can still look up and thank the Power that gave 
me birth. If God were to offer me a second life on this 
earth I should certainly accept it, though if I had 
another life to live I should try to do more for others 
and less for myself. Life for each of us is what we 
find and make our own. The best and highest which 
this earth contains exist only for the best and highest. 
If we are worthy of them they are ours. 



in 

THE TEMPLE OF GOD 

Him that overcometh, will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and 
he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God 
and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh 
down out of Heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. 

— Revelation iii : 12. 

PART of this verse is engraved on the tombstone of 
Phillips Brooks, and those who placed it there 
were well guided. He was a man who found the 
temple of God early and who left it infrequently, and in 
the portion of his life we know best, in the full blaze of 
his glory and his power, he seemed to become like Anna 
the prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, who de- 
parted not from the temple but served God there night 
and day. A few of the greatest preachers who ever 
lived may have sounded life on more sides, but Phillips 
Brooks, having found the greatest theme to which the 
heart of man responds, was content to build up his 
great harmonies on that alone. He said of himself 
that he had but one sermon. St. John also, in his old 
age, had but one sermon. He repeated, "Little chil- 
dren love one another," so often that at last people are 
said to have grown tired of it and to have begged the 
Apostle to tell them something else. Phillips Brooks 

186 



THE TEMPLE OF GOD 

varied his theme so unendingly that no one became 
tired of it. 

The first thought which this splendid verse suggests 
is entering the temple of God, and, I suppose, in some 
sense we all know what this means. Poor and sad 
is that life for whom the walls of this low earthly house 
never dissolve and reveal the splendid and holy temple 
of God on high, the house not made by hands, but 
by spiritual deeds and sacrifices, where God con- 
tinually dwells. I cannot describe this temple as I 
would. I can say in a poor, feeble, halting way what it 
means to me, but to every one it will mean something 
different. Yet sometimes merely to be reminded of 
our highest hopes refreshes our whole soul. 

The idea of a temple is a very old idea, but it is not 
the oldest idea of religion. Once men built their 
altars under the great dome of the sky, and they sent 
up their prayers into the vast face of Heaven. There 
is something grand and free in the thought that God is 
everywhere and that wherever He has recorded His 
name we may worship Him and He will come to us and 
bless us. Yet as religion began to separate itself 
from all material objects and to concentrate itself 
upon its own spiritual ideals temples began to rise 
everywhere all over the world. Houses were reared 
exclusively to God, free from all profane association, 
entering which religiously men felt that they were 
coming into the presence of God and renewing their 
relations with Him and with the unseen spiritual 
world. The experience of mankind has proved that 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

this is a good thing. It is all very well to say that the 
whole world is the temple of God and that all our time 
should be consecrated to Him. But unless there is one 
spot on our earth which especially suggests God and 
some particular time set apart for His service our 
religious feelings are apt to evaporate. Rather, they 
are sw r allowed up in a flood of other interests and other 
things. 

Sometimes, as I have stood in some great church at 
night, silent and empty and dark, and have thought of 
the thousands and tens of thousands of men and women 
who have worshiped God there, of the fruitful words 
that have echoed on that air, of the penitence, the 
sorrow, the joy, the gratitude that have gone up to 
God from that place, of the children who have been 
baptized at the font, of the marriage vows that have 
been exchanged at the altar, of the bodies of the good 
and wise and beautiful which have been carried up and 
down that aisle — then I begin to realize what the 
sanctity of a church means and that every church which 
has been loved by its people is consecrated by their 
affection and their faith. One great function of the 
Church is that it helps to keep the spiritual and infinite 
element of life constantly before our minds. 

All faith and hope and love that are not rooted in 
God are narrow, temporal, and disappointing. He 
who believes in spirits and souls all around him and in 
no divine Spirit above him is superstitious. The hope 
that ends with the world and this life will soon have an 
end. Yet beyond this earth God is without end. The 

188 



THE TEMPLE OF GOD 

love which goes from neighbor to neighbor and from 
man to man is mortal. The love which loves in God 
is immortal. All this is what the Church of God is 
intended to represent to men on earth — a task, it must 
be confessed, which the Church has performed very 
indifferently. In consequence of our unhappy divisions, 
in consequence of our indifference to beauty and our 
fear of truth, in consequence of our niggardliness in 
offering our highest and best to the service of God, 
the Church is far from being the grand, uniting, teach- 
ing, elevating power in the world which it might be. 
And just as far as the Church fails to express what is 
highest in the human soul it fails to touch the hearts of 
men. 

Beholding the poverty of the Church, untouched by 
its services, failing to hear the grand, ennobling truths 
of religion set forth in language which is worthy of them, 
multitudes of thinking people have begun to despise 
the Church. They either refuse to attend its services 
or they attend them from a sense of duty or old habit, 
with a sullen or resigned air, not expecting or allowing 
themselves to be touched, inspired, or even interested. 
They compare our artless performances with the art 
of the world. They contrast our dull utterances with 
the carefully prepared speeches of play-actors, and they 
think in their hearts that the theater is a greater and 
more useful institution than the Church, more adapted 
to men's needs, better able to teach moral lessons, and 
they even assert that the theater is to be the Church of 
the future. And yet if the Church were wise enough 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

and rich enough to make use of the means at her dis- 
posal, what possible comparison could there be between 
the Church and the theater? Architecture, sculpture, 
painting, oratory and music and the drama, too, are 
some of the arts religion and the Church have created 
and which the Church alone knows how to unite as she 
unites all. 

The whole Church is like a single instrument, built 
and played upon by the various arts to produce one 
harmonious effect. The vaulted roof rears itself on 
high. The tower rises higher. The bells peal without; 
the organ peals within. Nowhere are so many voices 
raised in song or in praise of so high an object. No- 
where is silence so holy or language so divine. No- 
where are beauty and truth and sublimity so united; 
and in the Church all these influences carry the soul in 
one direction, in the direction of that which is eternal. 

There is, indeed, another stage of which I would not 
say an evil word. It also, by the magic power of art, 
teaches great lessons to men. On that stage the arts 
are brought together, but only externally; just as the 
audience is brought together but is united by no in- 
ward tie, and when the play is played out it scatters 
without a thought or a care one for another. So on 
the stage the arts have no true unity. People sing of 
emotions which in nature could only be spoken. If 
they dance it is not from happiness. The prompter is 
in his box to show that what the actor utters is not 
his own, but another man's. The best actor is he who 
is most absolutely unmoved by what he utters. The 

190 



THE TEMPLE OF GOD 

make-up is artificial. The painting has the appearance 
of beauty only at a distance. The brilliancy is tinsel. 
The whole effect is based on sham and illusion. Why? 
Because He who unites the arts, He who demands 
reality, not illusion, for His effects, God, the universal 
artist, is not present or is not thought of. 

God also has His theater. His actors need no 
prompter. He multiplies them and His plots forever 
without repeating Himself once. In His play not an 
event is introduced which does not contribute to the 
final denouement. Before the secret shrine in which 
the drama is really played stretches a great curtain 
painted with strange forms of animals and men and 
stars and flowers. Through that curtain shines a light 
which reveals these forms. Life speaks the prologue; 
Death lifts the curtains and reveals to us what lies 
within. 

Secondly, I would consider music as one of the great 
ministers of religion. There must be some profound 
reason why the writers of the Bible speak so often of 
music as the language of Heaven, why St. John describes 
the song of praise which proceedeth from the throne of 
God and the Lamb. In music man speaks the lan- 
guage of the infinite. The very peculiarity of music 
is that it speaks no particular language. It is universal. 
It does not need to be translated. It translates itself 
and translates us, revealing to every heart its own se- 
crets, its own sorrows, its own noblest hopes. The 
most wonderful thing about music is that it has no 
original, no counterpart on earth. Therefore we look 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

for its counterpart in Heaven. Every other art has its 
model in Nature which it copies with more or less 
fidelity. Music alone has no model. It builds its 
marvelous fabric out of purely spiritual elements, and 
its effects are purely spiritual. I know of nothing more 
wonderful in this world than the passion, the exaltation, 
the self -revelation to a thousand hearts locked up in a 
single score of Wagner or Beethoven. Sometimes a 
single theme can express that which generations of 
people have felt and suffered and striven for. One 
might almost say that Protestantism, the stern, moral, 
self-controlled religion of the North, is contained in 
Bach's Passion music, just as the warm, tender Catholi- 
cism of the South finds perfect expression in Gounod's 
"Ave Maria." 1 Bach solemnly chants the sufferings of 
the Son of God. Battling with an infinitude of sorrows, 
of insults, of vulgar abuse is the iron will of Jesus Christ 
to which the theme ever returns more and more sadly 
until at last the iron snaps and the struggle is ended. 
In Gounod's "Ave Maria," a woman's cry to a woman, 
we see a soul struggling with its own infirmity, striving 
to rise above the earth and repeatedly falling back, 
until at last it soars like a lark above its own infirmities 
and sins and cares into the sunshine of God's presence, 
then folding its wings like a tired bird, it sinks back to 
earth with a few happy notes of peace and thanksgiving. 
We blame religion because it cannot be made alto- 
gether intelligible and rational. How is it with music? 

1 1 am, of course, aware that Gounod's composition is founded on a theme 
of Bach's. 

192 



THE TEMPLE OF GOD 

Suppose we could reduce all music to intelligible ideas 
and words, what would become of our greatest com- 
positions? By rationalizing music we should ruin 
it. It would no longer speak its own language, 
but one of the petty languages of earth. It would 
no longer translate us; it would have to be trans- 
lated. 

Into the temple of our God every one of us enters at 
times. The walls of this poor tenement of clay open 
and let us out. We come into the presence of God, we 
stand before Him. We realize that life is essentially 
holy and that it was given to us by goodness. We see 
why it is that nothing defiled can enter the Holy City, 
for we know that we have never entered it when our 
heart was hot with passion or defiled with evil thoughts. 
Our infirmity is not that we never enter the temple, 
but that we are continually going out. God sends 
us a great mercy and we accept it from His hand 
and we resolve to keep it pure and immaculate that 
it may bless us all our days. But in a little while 
we have either forgotten all about it or it is half 
buried by sad and evil associations and the beauti- 
ful light that was lighted for a moment in our heart 
goes out. The door of the temple closes and we find 
ourselves dwelling once more in a world of material 
objects. 

Did you ever hear how Zoroaster lost his shadow? 

One day in his wanderings he found himself surrounded 

by archangels whose glory was so great that his shadow 

totally disappeared, but in a little while he found it 

13 H>3 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

again in a garden of temptation and sorrow. That is a 
perfect allegory of human life. At times the archangels 
surround us all, the old dark clinging self slips from us 
and we look round us with delight. The shadow, the 
false self that clings to us so closely, is gone. It seems 
as if our old sins had simply lost their power over us. 
The brightness is so great that the darkness is swal- 
lowed up. "Now," we think, "I am free, the shadow 
can never return. Hereafter my life shall be open to 
the light of God on every side." And yet, before the 
sun sets, the old shadow, the old temptations, the old 
clinging self have returned, and the light lighted by 
God has well-nigh disappeared. 

How then is it possible for us to remain in this Temple 
which contains all that is good, all that we really love, 
where the sad, haunting, guilty shadow life cannot 
reach us? "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar 
in the temple of my God and he shall go out no more." 
All prizes go to them that overcome. It takes us a 
long time to realize this. We set out in life with the 
idea that happiness will come to us, but after the first 
joy of merely being alive has abated we learn that the 
soul makes its own happiness, and that we find happi- 
ness just about as often as we find hundred-dollar bills 
in the street. It is the same everywhere. In the 
world we see men apparently singled out for distinction. 
Honors come to them, they are placed in positions of 
dignity and power. Fools regard this as the result of 
chance and good luck. They do not take into account 
the long years of silent preparation, the immense labor 

194 




THE TEMPLE OP GOD 

that set that man above his fellows and made him the 
natural and logical candidate for the position. If the 
crisis always finds its man it is because the man has 
foreseen and compelled the crisis. Think of Lincoln. 
We read a book rich in wisdom and knowledge and we 
envy the author his happy ease of expression. But 
if we knew what that happy ease had cost him we 
should not envy him. Balzac spent ten years in form- 
ing a style that suited him, then ten years more in 
forming one that suited Paris. 

It is exactly the same with our religious life. We 
set out with the idea that God will do it all. The 
temple is so beautiful that we think we shall never w T ish 
to go out. Our faith satisfies us so completely that we 
feel only pitying contempt for doubters. We are so 
happy in our homes, so safe and content in the love of 
those God has given us, that we do not contemplate the 
possibility of change. But in all probability not one of 
those things will last. Rather, they can be converted 
into realities which will bless us forever only by im- 
mense labor and sacrifice. 

The pastor looks into the faces of his confirmation 
class as they humbly kneel to receive their first com- 
munion and he wonders if they know what religion is. 
In five years how many will be left? Only those who 
have overcome the immense obstacles that lie at the 
beginning of the religious life. The mother looks into 
the happy face of her daughter on her bridal day and 
she sighs to think of the sorrow and sacrifice and disil- 
lusion that must come to her before unselfish love, 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

strong love, love victorious over death can be hers. 
Life goes on, its first inspirations fade. The temple 
closes and we find ourselves again in the old world 
of sorrow, with the old dark shadow self clinging to us 
as closely as ever. The faith that was once so easy 
becomes difficult. Life and experience teach many 
lessons and ask many questions that our naive and 
childish minds did not take into account, and we must 
either acquiesce in skepticism or wrestle with God for 
new truth until we have won a faith that cannot be 
shaken, an anchorage that will hold in all the vicissi- 
tudes of life. 

Or sorrow comes to you. He who was your life is 
taken from your side and now the beautiful temple of 
God seems to close altogether. You hardly wish to 
enter it again. It is too full of sad associations. A 
pall seems to settle upon you. Your heart is turned to 
stone. It is true, you do not struggle, you do not 
rebel, but that is because you feel the futility of it, 
not because you love God. Sometimes you feel as if 
you almost hated Him. Of what use is religion and all 
these prayers? I could not be more bereaved, more 
robbed and desolate if there were no God. That, how- 
ever, is a great mistake. There are two kinds of love 
in this world — temporary love and eternal love. If 
yours is of the latter kind then in the presence of an 
eternity of happiness which may begin now and must 
begin soon the temporary loss partly loses its sting. 
Your grief gradually changes into longing to meet the 
loved one again, to be united to him again. Your 

196 



THE TEMPLE OF GOD 

heart begins to turn with f oreshadowings of unutterable 
blessedness to the world where he now lives. But 
without God what reason have you to believe in that 
world? Unless He to whom you once prayed together 
has received him, where is he? But if he is safe in God, 
in God you will find him. And even now, the more 
you live in the spirit the more you are with him, the 
more earnestly and tenderly you think of him the 
nearer he draws to you. So the image of your love 
is not the image of the butterfly that hovers over the 
flower for a moment, extracts its honey and departs. 
It is the flower itself hanging upon its stem, the eternal 
principle of the plant, the flower that is nourished by all 
the forces of your earthly life. In God alone is it 
possible to love eternally. 

So, if we persevere, the temple of God opens oftener 
and oftener to receive us, and we go out less and less 
frequently. Little by little the change takes place in 
heart and character and life. The image of the world 
of sin and sorrow we once bore is gradually obliterated 
and in its place God writes upon us our new name which 
no man knoweth save him that receiveth it. There 
comes at last to every man who overcomes that happy 
hour when his will and his life are in perfect accord, 
when he goes out no more; when his life is so sur- 
rounded by light that the dark shadow disappears, 
when goodness becomes easy and sin difficult, when his 
faith rests upon the solid foundation of experience and 
he himself becomes a pillar in the temple of God. 
Firm and unmoved, he stands in his place, and men, 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

seeing him, know that he stands there for God. He 
goes out no more. He could not go out now without 
weakening the whole fabric of God's temple. He has 
gained his victory and he will help many others to gain 
theirs. 



IV 

SALVATION BY WORK 

I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. — Nehemiah vi: 3. 

NEHEMIAH was a type of great man to which 
Israel rarely gave birth. He was neither a king, 
a prophet, nor a priest, but a great layman — the first 
of that long line of good wardens and vestrymen who 
are still building the walls of our Jerusalem. 

Nehemiah was intrusted with the task of restoring 
the city Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed. To his con- 
temporaries it must have seemed a vain and fruitless 
enterprise. The ancient glories of Jerusalem had 
departed. The temple was in ruins. The once nu- 
merous population had shrunk to a handful of religious 
refugees. The city "at unity with itself, and the joy 
of the whole earth," was but a heap of stones. And 
yet when the little company of Jewish exiles set out 
from Babylon in the year 537 B.C. to make their way 
across the deserts to Judea they carried with them the 
religion of humanity, and the frail walls erected by 
Nehemiah were then the sole bulwark of the Kingdom 
of God on earth; so that it is perfectly safe to say that 
had that undertaking failed we should not be Christians 
to-day. 

199 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

One would expect an inspired prophet to perceive the 
significance of such a moment, and the great Unknown 
of the Exile whom we call Isaiah failed not to do so 
and to encourage his departing friends with shouts of 
joy. "Go forth from Babylon, fly from the land of the 
Chaldeans, Proclaim it with shouts of joy! Tell it 
to the end of the earth, and say: Jehovah hath re- 
deemed his servant Jacob. How beautiful upon the 
mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, 
that publisheth peace, that saith unto Zion, thy God 
reigneth. Up! up! go forth, touch no unclean thing. 
Go forth from among them. Cleanse yourselves, ye 
that bear Jehovah's vessels. Ye shall go forth with 
joy, and be led forth in peace. The mountains and hills 
shall break forth before you into singing, and all the 
trees of the field shall clap their hands." 

All this, however, could not fail to call forth the 

opposition of those persons whose business is to criticize 

and to mock at everything that grows. In particular, 

Tobiah the Ammonite and Sanballat of Horan were 

jealous of Nehemiah's undertaking. They could not 

endure to see Jerusalem regaining some vestige of her 

former greatness. First they tried to ridicule Nehe- 

miah, then to entrap him. One day they went out to 

see how the walls were rising. Sanballat mocked at 

Nehemiah's feeble attempt. Tobiah declared that a 

good-sized fox could demolish such a wall by jumping 

over it. Nehemiah quietly went on with his work, and 

the wall continued to rise. Finding that they could 

not discourage Nehemiah by their sneers, Tobiah and 

200 



SALVATION BY WORK 

Sanballat now took more decided steps. They pre- 
tended to believe that those little walls were a menace 
to the whole country, that Nehemiah was actually 
planning a revolt against the Xing of Persia, and that 
after rebuilding Jerusalem the next step would be to 
make himself King of the city. They wrote him a 
letter which ran as follows: "It is rumored among the 
nations, and Djeschim says that you and the Jews are 
making up your minds to revolt. That is why you are 
building this wall. And after it is built you will de- 
clare yourself King. You have brought prophets to 
Jerusalem to proclaim you King of Judah. All this 
shall be brought to the knowledge of the King of 
Persia. Come then and let us hear what you have 
to say." 

To this Nehemiah made the fine reply that ought to 
be engraved upon the heart of every one who hopes to 
accomplish anything in this world: "I am doing a great 
work, so that I cannot come down." Let us then take 
this as our subject — happiness, dignity, and salvation 
by work. 

Man's destiny upon this earth is to be a working 
animal. He will finish his labors only when the 
planet he has transformed and remade shall no longer 
be capable of sustaining his life. The earliest evi- 
dences of his existence are his tools — the axes and 
hammers, the mortars and pestles, the arrows and fish- 
hooks he has left behind him in the dens and caves 
he once inhabited. Beginning his existence probably 
in the tropics, man alone of all animals has been able 

301 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

to take possession of the entire globe, to adapt himself 
to the severities and enervations of every clime. He 
has endured the long rigors of the polar night. He has 
grown brown and black beneath the intolerable fervor of 
an equatorial sun. But he has flourished best, and has 
grown to greatness and planted his civilizations in those 
parts of the world where he has been able to work 
hardest. On the other hand, where Nature supplies all 
his wants by her kindness, or crushes his aspirations by 
her severity, morally and physically man is at his 
worst. 

The wants of other animals can be easily satisfied. 
Having food and a dwelling-place they are therewith 
content. The ant throws up her little fort exactly as 
she did on the day she won the admiration of Solomon. 
The eagle builds her dizzy home and spreads wide her 
sheltering wing beneath her young as when she sug- 
gested that touching image of God's loving kindness to 
Moses. The beaver has never dreamed of improving 
on the style of building invented by the first great 
architect of his race. But, on the other hand, man's 
wants are endless; therefore his labor is endless. His 
necessities supplied, he desires luxuries. The luxury 
of to-day becomes the necessity of to-morrow. He 
finds a joy in his work. He cannot bear to lay it down 
even after there is no real need of his working. In- 
toxicated by dreams he struggles, he plans, he creates, 
he achieves, and in so doing he finds his happiness. 
If the time ever comes when any considerable portion 
of humanity, emancipated from the servitude of 

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SALVATION BY WORK 

poverty and redeemed from the bitter struggle for daily 
bread, should have time and strength for better things 
it would not therefore cease to work. It would only 
transfer its labors to a higher sphere — that is to say, 
the realm of the Spirit. 

In the Book of Genesis it is true we read that labor 
is a curse pronounced against our first parents in con- 
sequence of sin. To this we can only say that God's 
curses are better than man's blessings. For us labor is 
no curse. It is idleness that is the mother of all evils. 
The most pathetic figure on the whole canvas of our 
civilization (soon he will be the most menacing figure) 
is the unemployed man. He rises early in the morning 
and tramps the streets like a homeless dog, casting 
wistful glances on other laborers on their way to their 
daily work. Now, with his rough, embarrassed manner 
he timidly accosts an employer and is repulsed. Again 
and again he is told, "There is nothing for you." At 
last he takes society at its word and loses heart and 
soul and manhood and sinks into the ranks of the 
permanently unemployed whom we call tramps, 
whether they spend their time in aimlessly roaming 
through Europe or in wandering on foot over this 
country. Or else, because he must work and because 
all honest vocations are closed to him, he chooses a 
dishonest vocation and becomes a criminal. 

It is when people have nothing to do, when they have 
lost a clear apprehension of their duty, that the sorrows 
and inequalities of this life, the Mystery of Providence, 
bear hardest on them. Then every walk in life seems 

203 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

equally slippery and treacherous. All paths end in the 
void. Nothing is worth doing, and there is no prog- 
ress. Innumerable have been the evils of the past, and 
the future will be no better. A dreary course of nature 
seems to them ever running down and ever beginning 
again at the same old point. Amid the darkness and 
the shadows man, haunted by terrible visions, is seen 
in the vain pursuit of a chimera he calls his destiny. 

He weaves and is clothed with derision, 

He sows but he shall not reap. 
His life is a dream and a vision 

Between a sleep and a sleep. 

The cultured cynic who wrote Ecclesiastes declares as 
the result of his meditations no less than thirty times 
that all below is vanity and vanity of vanities. But 
Aristotle, calmly facing reality and noting one by one 
the great issues of life and death, did not find that all is 
vanity. "The course of this world is beset with 
shadows, but it is toward God.' 5 Man's destiny is 
dark, and yet it is sufficiently illumined by the single 
august word — duty. 

I believe when the final verdict shall be passed upon 
our wonderful age its real greatness will be found to 
consist in its passion for work. Our age has been neither 
an age of Pericles nor a Renascence. We cannot lay 
claim to the literary and poetic exuberance of the 
Elizabethans. Our discoveries in Nature scarcely 
rival those of Kepler, Newton, and Copernicus. We 
have produced no works of art comparable to those of 

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SALVATION BY WORK 

Rafael, Da Vinci, Correggio, and Michael Angelo. We 
can boast of no such galaxy of statesmen as Washing- 
ton, Franklin, Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton. The 
luxury and splendor of our private life, thank God, is 
not yet comparable to the luxury of Rome under the 
Empire, or of France before the ax fell. But on the 
other hand, in no century history records has so much 
work been done. No age has witnessed so many useful 
inventions that make life easier and better. In no age 
has the advance and diffusion of knowledge been so 
rapid or so general. Not one has planned such gigantic 
tasks, with so much sanity, or executed them with more 
unflinching courage. As one wanders to-day through 
the city of New York and observes the marvels of en- 
gineering and architecture created during the past 
decade, one would suppose that a race greater than man 
had been at work there. 

All this has not failed to react upon the character of 
the workman. This concentrated and immense energy 
is perhaps the best trait of our national character. It 
is that which has prevented the permanent establish- 
ment in America of those privileged and leisured classes 
that have done so much to retard the progress and the 
morality of other lands. In this country a leisured 
class without the inherited dignity of great deeds or 
traditions or ideals has always seemed to be slightly 
absurd. In this land of great opportunities the mere 
idler is felt to be a parasite on our civilization. We 
have no place for him and he must go. This is the 
secret of the short life of so many typical American 

205 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

families which begin gloriously and end in ignominy. 
The father sets out with no other capital than health, 
character, intelligence and courage to found the family 
fortune. The son inherits his father's wealth and de- 
votes his life to squandering it. The grandson is 
forced to begin again at the bottom of the ladder with- 
out money, constitution, or character. Let us hope 
that there will be be no great-grandson. 

Work dignifies life and saves us from many of its 
worst evils. No man knows what it is in him to do 
until he measures himself against some great task. It 
is in his work that a man finds himself, becomes himself, 
and utters himself, so that though dead he yet speaketh. 
Think for a moment of the Shakespeare we know in his 
work and the Shakespeare we know outside his work. 
It is not to the poor player of the Globe Theater that 
we bow down, or to the "pleasant Willy" of " Whites," 
or to the householder of Stratford, but to the consum- 
mate artist, the patient workman, to the man who in 
discovering himself revealed to us ourselves forever. 

So, in our varying measure, it is with us all. Our 
work calls for our best. In rising to its demands we 
become our best. Through the self-sacrifice and 
eternal vigilance our work imposes on us we become 
courageous, calm, energetic, active, free. Our work 
saves us. Our work is a mediator and a redeemer: 
a mediator with the higher world of the mind, a re- 
deemer from an empty or wasted life. It imposes on 
us a sacred obligation to be and to remain our best. 
We will not prostitute the powers we have consecrated 

206 



SALVATION BY WORK 

to a noble task in which we ourselves believe. Go 
to the student dreaming of fame; go to the man of 
affairs as he sits, perhaps anxious and perplexed, 
guarding not only his own interests, but the interests 
of an entire community; go to the lawyer, elaborating 
the argument on which the honor of a family hangs, 
or to the inventor and discoverer, or to the surgeon, 
and invite them to a life of dissipation and pleasure, and 
from them all you will receive the same answer: "I am 
doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.' 5 

There comes to so many men and women a time 
when life no longer interests them. They have tasted 
of its first pleasures and know what they are worth. 
They have done the same things so many times that 
they are tired. Their early ideals for some reason not 
having been converted into living realities have re- 
turned to God who gave them. The impetus, the 
spring of life is lost, and they drift sadly and miserably 
to and fro, not knowing nor much caring whither they 
are going, but conscious ever of bitter disappointment 
and sorrow over the dullness and insipidity of life from 
which they once hoped so much. Some resolutely mine 
the last vein of youth and then try to live on the 
recollection of their lost treasures. Some ask them- 
selves "Is life worth living?" and prove to themselves by 
fatally easy arguments that it is not, while some con- 
tent themselves with merely railing at God and 
Providence. 

This ennui, this "disease of forty years" that is fast 
becoming a disease of thirty years, perhaps the most 

207 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

formidable symptom of our aging civilization, can be 
met and overcome by judicious habits of work. There 
is one class of men, at all events, who are not exposed 
to it. They are the great toilers for whom life is all too 
short. Just as Antseus derived fresh strength from 
every contact with his mother Earth, so they remain 
ever young, ever strong, by their ever-renewed labors. 
Plato, St. Paul, Dante, Balzac, Darwin found life 
worth living. They found it full of joy, full of growing 
wonder and charm, as their eyes were gradually opened 
to its meaning. The green and glorious old age of a 
Homer, a Goethe, a Verdi, and a Richard Wagner proves 
to us over and over again that there are no fixed and 
necessary limits to human progress and human achieve- 
ment. They are our best intimations of immortality. 
But now the practical question arises, how are we 
to find such a work as I have been describing? Man's 
desire is to create, but few of us apparently can do this. 
Few of us are creative artists, few of us are original 
thinkers, or poets, or writers who can derive a con- 
stant joy from the mere flow of noble and exalted 
thoughts. Moreover, few indeed of us are free to 
engage in those tasks which seem to us most attractive. 
But, on the contrary, we are all bound by countless 
ties and, for the most part, to very prosaic or petty 
callings. Is there, then, no chance for us to escape 
from the tyranny of a mean and narrow lot? Or is this 
and are all similar calls to a large, free, and happy life 
but the invitation of the free wind to the chained 
prisoner, or the impotent call of the false miracle- 

208 



SALVATION BY WORK 

worker to the lame man to rise and walk, after he has 
stolen the cripple's crutches? 

What, then, are the conditions of a really great work? 
I think there are only two one need consider. It must 
be large and it must be varied. It must be large. A 
large and simple idea is always fertile. It will bear 
much fruit. It must be so large that we cannot out- 
grow it, large enough to accompany us our whole life 
long, and to grow with our growth, and to present us 
problems we cannot solve and possibilities we can never 
hope to exhaust. It must reveal itself to us as the 
most beautiful of ideals, but as an ideal capable of 
daily realization. It must walk with us by day and 
sweetly rest beside us at night. It must be so great 
that we ourselves believe in it and are willing to sink 
and lose ourselves in it, confident that in the end we 
shall find ourselves and something more than ourselves 
by it and through it. It must be something that can 
evoke our holiest purpose and stir our deepest com- 
passion and nerve us to meet and overcome all dangers 
and obstacles and bring us to our knees in thankfulness 
and awe. Nothing less than this can permanently 
satisfy us. But such an object as this can be found 
only in humanity, in a mingling of the divine with the 
human — God, the divine life, revealed in humanity, 
and humanity revealed, beautified and transfigured in 
the light of God and of Christ. 

In the next place, a great work must be varied. 
The human heart is changeable in its desires, change- 
able in its attachments. We change and grow and 

14 209 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

our work must change and grow with us. Otherwise 
it will soon cease to interest us. But if I have made 
my meaning plain thus far it will not be difficult to 
perceive that this condition of endless change and 
inexhaustible richness is supplied by humanity with 
Christ at its head and by humanity alone. Among the 
countless myriads of human beings who have lived 
there are no two alike. And even in that limited 
number of men and women we know, or in one man or 
woman, for that matter, what mystery, what endless 
mingling of forces, what heights and depths, what an 
infinite background, what unsuspected roots stretching 
away into the unseen, uniting the soul to God! 

He who has once realized this thought of humanity 
resting in God and his relation to it has surely found 
his work in life. It is a work we all can do, for with 
this humanity we are all united. We are a part of it, 
for it has made us what we are, and we are nothing 
without it. Humanity is always beautiful, though it 
is not always equally beautiful. But in Jesus Christ 
it is perfectly beautiful. Ah, how he loved it ! And we 
cannot escape from it and separate ourselves from its 
joys and sorrows and refuse to share its hopes and 
longings, its infinite tragedy and pathos, without losing 
all that binds us to Jesus and makes us really human. 
And, on the other hand, it is when I let my life go out 
in love and goodness to my fellow-men that the life of 
Jesus and the possibilities of my own nature are revealed 
to me as I never saw them before. In losing myself I find 
myself and something greater and better than myself. 

210 



SALVATION BY WORK 

Religion now becomes to me a reality, whether it is 
the willing surrender of the soul to God or the constant 
revelation of God to the soul: the lifting of the finite 
up to the infinite or the vision and realization of the 
infinite in the finite. The bond is broken and I am 
free. God no longer seems to me a mere name, a 
faint, far-off idea, but the reality in whom I live and 
move and have my being, as He reveals Himself to me 
more fully day by day in the hitherto unknown, un- 
suspected sweetness of doing good. The bonds, I say, 
of my poor, narrow personal life are broken, and I 
am free. Free to rise above the conditions of a mean 
and narrow lot, free to enter into the wide, deep, 
absorbing life of humanity, and by and through hu- 
manity into the life of God. In working for humanity 
we find our opportunity. We can satisfy our most 
imperious desire to create something which shall 
endure. In this sense women are the truest creators, 
for they create humanity itself. 

Lastly, let us remember the good advice of Nehemiah, 
to do our work before we attempt to criticize it. Work 
done speaks for itself. All the criticism in the world 
cannot undo it. Criticism, on the other hand, is good 
and useful provided it is intended to help, not to dis- 
courage us. But to the invitations of all Cassandras 
and prophets of evil, to all who would disgust us with 
life, discourage and enervate us, we will give the fine 
and temperate answer of the brave old layman, "I am 
doing a great work, so that I cannot come down." 



211 



JUSTICE AND MERCY 

Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high 
God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year 
old? 

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands 
of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of 
my body for the sin of my soul? 

He hath showed thee, man, what is good; and what doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God?— -Micah vi: 6, 7, 8. 

CERTAINLY this is one of the great passages of 
Holy Writ. Persons who question the inspira- 
tion of the Bible should calculate, if they are able, the 
part played by these words in the progress of the 
human soul. It is not Micah who asks this question, 
it is man's conscience. Wherewith shall I appear be- 
fore God? That is the question which we all, amid 
our apparent indifference, our secret sins, our frequent 
failings, are asking ourselves every day. That is the 
question, the question of all questions, which men have 
asked themselves in the silent palpitating depths of their 
hearts ever since they learned that there is a holy 
God before whom they must appear. And Micah 
faithfully notes and superbly answers the various 
expedients men have proposed to themselves. 

212 



JUSTICE AND MERCY 

1. Can God be bought off with a gift? God has 
blessed me in many ways, or sometimes I am candid 
enough to say my own shrewdness and industry have 
blessed me. I have much goods laid up for many years. 
If I keep them all to myself perhaps the dark Power 
up there will envy me so much happiness and send 
some sweeping misfortune on me. It might be prudent 
to propitiate Him with the gift of a part, that I may 
tranquilly enjoy the rest. So argued the ancients. 
They were always afraid of the jealousy of the gods. 
So Amasis, King of Egypt, renounced his alliance 
with the famous Polycrates for the sole reason that the 
amazing good fortune of Polycrates which never met 
with any disaster was sure to incur the envy of the gods. 
Polycrates admitted the justice of this reasoning, took 
his most cherished possession, an exquisite seal ring, 
and threw it into the sea. The gods, however, declined 
the tardy gift, and returned it to the tyrant in the 
stomach of a fish, and over all his splendor he saw the 
sword of fate suspended by a hair. He was decoyed to 
the mainland and crucified by his enemy. The gods 
had avenged themselves. 

Let no mortals dare to be 
Happier in their lives than we. 
Thus the jealous gods decree. 

Even this crude superstition has not wholly disap- 
peared. People still imagine that God begrudges them 
happiness, that if they would be well-pleasing to Him 
they must be at least a little miserable. So some good 

213 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

men renounce the innocent pleasures of this life with the 
sole expectation of rendering themselves more accept- 
able to the Deity. The mother says, " My children have 
not been ill this winter/' and taps on wood, hoping 
vaguely to disarm the jealousy of the spirit who heard 
her speak. 

2. Or, men have a sincere wish to give something to 
God. They feel in their hearts that they owe Him 
something for the innumerable blessings he has liber- 
ally poured out upon them. They do not wish to be 
ungrateful. They ask themselves sometimes, "Where- 
with shall I come before the Lord and bow myself 
before the high God?" They feel that they owe 
something, but not all. Not themselves, not the 
consecration of their mind with all its superb facul- 
ties, their heart with all its love. Hardly that. But 
there are the thousands of rams herded in Chicago 
and Kansas City, and the ten thousand rivers of oil, 
which nowadays flow in pipe-lines. Some of these, 
perchance, may please the Lord and wipe out my 
obligation to the eternal God. I will not give myself, 
I will not do justly nor love mercy, but I will build 
a church; I will found a college and call it after my 
name; I will convert the heathen and be a philanthro- 
pist. Well and good! That man has certainly taken 
some steps in the right way. He has advanced as far 
as many of Micahs's contemporaries who did the same 
thing. I have never believed in the curse that is sup- 
posed to cling to "tainted" money. If it cannot be 
returned to its rightful owners let it be used for the pub- 

214 



JUSTICE AND MERCY 

lie good. But does that answer the prophet's tremen- 
dous question? Is it with these things, after all — our 
hospitals, our churches, our gifts, and presents — that 
we shall confidently present ourselves before Him who 
has taught us that the wealth of the world in His eyes 
is as nothing in comparison with the value of one soul? 
It is not with these, not with wealth and splendor, not 
with purple and fine linen and a retinue of servants 
and the traditions of a proud family that we shall 
appear in the presence of our Maker. Ere that time 
comes all these things will have become as less than 
nothing. Not with these, but in our own persons, with 
our infinite capacity for happiness and misery, shall we 
stand at last before God to receive His judgment. 

3. But there are times, at least there is one time, as 
Micah well knew, when we take a less superficial and 
light-hearted view of God's claim on us and of what 
we owe to God. It is when conscience accuses and 
condemns us, when God has brought to us the convic- 
tion of sin, and we feel ourselves lying under condemna- 
tion or affliction. Then we begin to estimate our 
worldly possessions at their true value. They may 
help us to forget, they cannot take away our sin. What 
choice treasure, what rare possession can bring peace 
and happiness to a burdened conscience, to a heavy, 
anxious heart? We feel then that God demands more 
at our hands than a gift. Gifts cannot atone to the 
dead, cannot take away another's misery and deep dis- 
grace, cannot restore the happiness we have stolen. 
At such times a gift is an insult to a human being, and 

215 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

will it satisfy God? We feel in our hearts that it will 
not. Sin demands sacrifice; but what is the nature 
of that sacrifice? Will it please God merely to punish 
me, or will He demand a more dreadful retribution, 
exacting His fearful penalty on those innocent beings 
who have loved me, believed in me, trusted me? 
"Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the 
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" It is true, 
the punishment must be borne. It is true, the inno- 
cent often suffer for the guilty, and with the guilty. 
But Micah here makes the eternal affirmation that what 
God desires is not the suffering, punishment, and 
death of the sinner, but his happiness and life; that 
if God sends punishment it is not to destroy us, but to 
wean us from the evil that would destroy us; that the 
only sacrifice God asks of us is not the sacrifice of our 
first-born, but the sacrifice of ourselves; that the only 
atonement we can make to Him is to do better, and that 
we wound God more by our remorse and despair than 
we wounded Him by our sin. "He hath showed thee, 
O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require 
of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk 
humbly with thy God?" 

Among those who have blessed and benefited their 
kind the just man assuredly is not the least. The 
Christian religion, preoccupied with its vast themes of 
love, sin, and redemption, has attached less importance 
to justice than did many of the religions of antiquity; 
or rather, Christianity set up so high an ideal that it 
despaired of the possibility of man's righteousness and 

216 



JUSTICE AND MERCY 

depended on God to justify him for his faith, rather 
than by reason of his imperfect performance. And yet, 
while admitting all this, we can take pleasure in the 
Old Testament ideal of the just man who walks before 
God confident of his own integrity, in the Psalmist 
who honestly said: "Save me, O God, for I am holy. 
I have walked before Thee in innocency." St. Paul, 
who declared himself the chief of sinners, doubtless 
represents a higher type of conscience, but there is also 
something grand and sustaining in the character of 
Job, who, aware of his own rectitude, declined to admit 
himself guilty of sins he was not conscious of com- 
mitting, and who refused to lower his head in the 
presence of his judge. In every community its ideal- 
ists, who, carried away by the thought of what men and 
nations should be, passionately accuse their day and 
generation, are men of the highest value. But we also 
reserve our gratitude and admiration for those men of 
action who obey orders, do their duty as they see it, are 
faithful to trusts, flinch not before painful duties and 
who, having acted according to their lights, are satis- 
fied with themselves, and take no shame for what they 
have not done. When Goethe was presented to the 
Emperor Napoleon, in the hour of Germany's deep 
humiliation, Napoleon, with his usual rudeness, said to 
him, "Ha! I presume you think yourself a great man." 
"Sire," said the noble poet, "when I think of what 
man ought to be, no: but" (looking Bonaparte straight 
in the eye) "when I compare myself with other men, 
yes." Of Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, we read 

217 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

that he was a just man. Who knows the effect of his 
justice on the character of the Saviour of the world? 
And to-day, amid the public and private corruptions of 
modern life, when all virtue is adjudged relative, and 
honesty largely a question of opportunity, who can 
estimate the value of the just, the upright, the four- 
square man, the man who must be convinced but who 
cannot be bought, terrified, tempted into evil courses? 
Fenimore Cooper drew for us one such character in his 
Natty Bumppo. Nature created another in Abraham 
Lincoln. And that is what, first of all, the Lord re- 
quires of thee — to do justly. No man can please God, 
no man's gift, no man's repentance shall be accepted 
of God who is not willing to give up crooked ways. 
With nothing less than this can we come before the 
Lord and bow ourselves before the High God — namely, 
the intention to lead an honest and upright life. 

Only the actions of the just 

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust. 

But in human nature every virtue is limited, limited 
by the claims of other virtues. So it has frequently 
been said that any virtue pushed to an extreme becomes 
a vice. Abraham Lincoln was a just man; but if he 
had been merely a just man would he be enshrined as he 
is to-day in the hearts of his people? Aristides of 
Athens also was a just man, and after holding impor- 
tant public offices all his life died so poor that he did 
not leave enough to pay for his funeral. Yet he was 
banished by the Athenians from the city he had 

218 



JUSTICE AND MERCY 

gloriously saved, his fellow-citizens avowing that they 
were tired of hearing him called "the Just." And that 
is the fate of most just men who are merely just. We 
honor the noble integrity of Lincoln, but we love him 
for his mercy, for his inability to hate an enemy. We 
remember his magnanimity, his alacrity to pardon the 
poor soldier, exhausted by the long day's labor and 
overtaken by sleep. We think of his love for children, 
his exquisite letters of sympathy and condolence with 
the bereaved. It is the man who is merely just that 
has made justice hated. Who that has lived in New 
England does not know this type of man — hard, proud, 
inflexible himself, and unable to make the least allow- 
ance for the weaknesses of others? His son displeases 
him, he is brutally scourged and runs away from home. 
The little ones obey, but only from fear, and the 
mother's chief business in life is interposing her love 
between her children and the severity of her husband. 
And yet often in these granite natures there is a vein 
of tenderness and deep love that seldom or never comes 
to the surface, which the man carefully conceals as a 
weakness, not knowing that in the frosty smile, re- 
membered after he is dead, lay his real power. To 
leave an example of a just life is much, but to mingle 
justice with mercy as God mingles it, to let the respect 
of our children lose itself in love, is what most of us 
desire. 

What was the power of Jesus Christ? Did it merely 
consist in the fact that he was a just man and habitu- 
ally did right? Do we not almost lose sight of the 

219 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

justice of his character in the presence of a higher 
quality that transcends justice, and that enabled him 
to utter words and to pass judgments that the merely 
just man would not dare to utter and to pass? "Let 
him that is without sin among you cast the first stone." 
"Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more." 
And is it not his compassionate love, despairing of no 
sinner, excluding none, that has drawn to him millions 
whom justice could never win, and that has given us 
our new conception of the love of God? Yet in Jesus 
mercy was never at variance with justice. The 
severest moralist, Immanuel Kant, could find nothing 
to condemn either in Christ's own life or in his judg- 
ments of the lives of others. On the contrary, it was 
Jesus' intense love for men that enabled him to enter so 
deeply into their motives, weaknesses, and temptations 
as to do absolute justice to their conduct. 

If Micah's first command is to do justly, and his 
second to love mercy, his last is to walk humbly with 
thy God. The man who has really tried to do the 
first and the second, will not find it difficult to do 
the third. For, after all, our highest righteousness 
is not so high, our deepest compassion is not so 
pure in its unselfishness as to give us much occasion 
to boast before God or man. When we reflect on 
what the sins of our life, both of omission and com- 
mission, have been, when we remember how much 
above our worth we are habitually rated by those 
who love us, when we recognize that we owe most 

of the best that is in us not to our own excellence but 

220 



JUSTICE AND MERCY 

to the goodness of others and to the Providence of God, 
we are not tempted to lift our heads too high nor to look 
down from the lofty height of an imaginary virtue on 
the weaknesses and shortcomings of other people. If 
forty years' acquaintance with our own nature has 
taught us nothing else, it ought to have taught us hu- 
mility and charity for others. If the sorrows, the mis- 
takes, and failures of our life have not taught us this 
lesson it must have been because we were strangely 
slow to learn it. "To walk humbly with thy God" — 
that is the end of all our virtue. When smitten to the 
earth, to raise our eyes to Heaven; to be able to look 
up to God and feel Him near, to feel that the past is 
forgiven and passed into His mighty keeping; to 
believe that His kind, fatherly eye rests with appro- 
bation upon our life — that is peace of conscience and 
joy of conscience and true eternal blessedness. "And 
what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and 
to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?" 
That is all, and that is enough. 



VI 



THE HEALING OF NAAMAN 



Now Naaman, Captain of the host of the King of Syria, was a great man 
with his master and honorable, because by him the Lord had given de- 
liverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valor, but he was a leper. 

— II Kings v: 1. 

THE story of Naaman and Elisha is one of the most 
vigorous and perfect stories related in the Bible. 
In fact it would be hard to point to another narrative 
of equal length which contains such a wealth of human 
interest. Neither De Maupassant nor Balzac has been 
able to paint so many vigorous figures on so small a 
canvas. The little maid, Naaman, the King of 
Israel, and the King of Syria, Elisha, Gehazi, and 
Naaman's friendly servant are all drawn with vigor 
and much individuality. The narrative which re- 
counts Naaman's visit to Elisha is very old, probably 
not much younger than the adventure itself. The in- 
cident appears to be historical and not mythical or 
allegorical. 

Naaman, in spite of his pride and quick temper, is a 
very lovable person, a brave, courteous, well-bred 
man. He is described as a successful soldier, a mighty 
man of valor, rich and honorable and in high favor 
with his master by reason of the victories that have 

222 



THE HEALING OF NAAMAN 

attended his arms. His life had been crowned by 
high success. Fortune had smiled on him, he was 
happily married and was loved by his dependents. 
But with all his good fortune that perverse principle 
which seems ever to thwart man's efforts to be happy 
had managed to instil a drop of poison into his cup of 
joy which made its contents bitter, for he was afflicted 
with that mysterious scourge which in the Bible is 
called leprosy. His leprosy, however, does not seem 
to have been of the severe, contagious and incurable 
type, otherwise he would not have been permitted to 
mingle freely with his fellow-men. Elisha's refusal to 
meet him did not spring from fear of infection, but from 
his prophet's pride, which refused to humble itself 
before the great ones of the earth. Gehazi's leprosy 
was not communicated by Naaman, unless it was con- 
tracted from the garments he had purloined, for at the 
time of his meeting with Naaman, Naaman is described 
as well. Nevertheless, like all skin affections, Naa- 
man's malady was a sore burden, so heavy that he was 
ready to snatch at any hope of relief. 

Now let us go on to the story. In the course of their 
innumerable border raids the Syrian troops had carried 
off a young Hebrew girl whom Naaman had appro- 
priated and presented to his wife. This child, with the 
peculiar adaptiveness of her people, soon made herself 
at home in Naaman's house and gained the confidence of 
the family. One day while mistress and maid were 
engaged in a chat over domestic matters Naaman's 
health was mentioned and the little slave expressed her 

223 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

strong conviction that if her master could meet the 
great prophet of Samaria he would be cured of his 
leprosy. 

How willing our friends are to prescribe for us in our 
sicknesses, and how quick we often are to accept the 
most extraordinary suggestions! Naaman had barely 
heard of Elisha, and he knew nothing of the means the 
prophet had at his disposal for the treatment of leprosy; 
and yet no sooner was his little slave's faith mentioned 
to him than he hastened to set out for Samaria. Nor 
did he go unannounced. Born and bred a politician, 
he knew the value of what people nowadays call in- 
fluence. He went to the King of Syria, probably Ben 
Hadad, told him of his hopes and asked for a letter of 
introduction, which the King readily wrote. Neither 
Naaman nor Ben Hadad knew much about miracles, 
but they did know how things are done in the great 
world. All that seemed necessary to them was that 
Naaman, properly accredited, should present himself 
before the King of Israel, and the King, desirous to 
oblige his powerful neighbor, would either effect the 
cure himself or he would give the order to his subject 
to work the necessary miracle. "Now then," said the 
Syrian King, complacently, "when this letter is come 
unto thee, behold I have herewith sent Naaman my 
servant unto thee that thou mayest recover him of his 
leprosy." 

In Israel, however, miracles were not worked at the 
order of kings, as Ahab and his successors well knew. 
This letter, therefore, put the King into a curious 

224 



THE HEALING OF NAAMAN 

predicament. It affected him as a similar letter coming 
from the King of England would affect President Wil- 
son, though in an earlier administration there would 
have been no embarrassment. After reading it with 
extreme astonishment the King rent his clothes : "Am I 
God to kill or to make alive that this man doth send 
unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? Wherefore 
consider, I pray you, how he seeketh a quarrel against 
me." Elisha's behavior, at this juncture, shows a fine 
sense of confidence in himself and in his power : * Where- 
fore," said he, "hast thou rent thy clothes? Let him 
now come unto me and he shall know that there is a 
prophet in Israel." His treatment of Naaman is very 
interesting. He did not go forth to meet the illus- 
trious patient and help him to alight from his chariot. 
Nor did he advise Naaman to stay in his vicinity for 
several months. Strange to say, he did not attempt to 
treat Naaman at all, nor stand and call upon his God 
for help. Nor did he seek to inspire Naaman's faith, 
except by the positive assurance that his water-cure 
would succeed. He merely sends Naaman a message, 
abrupt and almost rude in form and apparently 
absurd in character. "Go wash in Jordan seven 
times." Little wonder that the high-spirited and 
testy soldier was deeply wounded and went away with- 
out the slightest intention of trying the prophet's 
prescription. Is this the reception due to a man of his 
rank and character? Is this a proper and courteous 
response to the bearer of the great Syrian King's 
letter? Elisha certainly has not a good bedside man- 

15 225 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

ner. And what an absurd injunction! If this great 
act of healing is to be performed by the power of God 
why not solemnly supplicate God to do it? Or if bath- 
ing in running water is the proper treatment for 
leprosy, what was the need of going to Samaria? 
"Are not Abana and Pharpar," the deep and limpid 
rivers of Damascus, "better than all the waters of 
Israel? So he went away in a rage." It is as if one of 
us, believing himself seriously ill, at great pains and 
expense should take a long journey to consult a cele- 
brated physician, and after a cursory examination he 
should say: "You need no treatment from me. Bathe 
regularly, take more exercise, eat and drink less and go 
to bed at ten o'clock, and you will be perfectly well." 
Elisha, however, presented no bill. 

One of the privileges of good men is to be loved by 
their servants. Naaman to a marked degree possessed 
the affections of his dependents. Another of his 
servants now approaches him and respectfully and 
affectionately addresses him in these wise words, which 
have served as a text for thousands of sermons. "My 
father, if the prophet had bid thee to do some great 
thing, wouldst thou not have done it? How much 
rather, then, when he saith unto thee, Wash and be 
clean." With these words Naaman's anger, as quick 
to fade as it was to blaze, disappears. His good sense 
prevails over his disappointment. Since he has come 
so far to obtain this physician's advice he will follow it. 

"Then he went down and dipped himself seven times 
in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God, 

226 






THE HEALING OF NAAMAN 

and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little 
child and he was clean." As to the means by which 
this wonderful cure was effected I know no more than 
you do. The general character of this narrative, as I 
have said, seems to be historical and truthful and not 
far removed in point of time from the event. As is 
the case with most ancient miracles of healing, the 
diagnosis is too slight to permit us to judge what 
actually took place. The etiology of true leprosy is 
still a matter of dispute. The ancients regarded it as a 
constitutional affection induced by bad diet, especially 
by the consumption of partially decayed fish. Many 
modern physicians believe leprosy to be a germ disease, 
whose bacillus they have identified. For thousands of 
years it has been pronounced incurable, though to-day 
the claim is made that cases of true leprosy have been 
successfully treated in New Orleans and elsewhere. 
Rationalism, as usual, is ready with its more or less 
plausible argument. It is possible to distinguish several 
forms of leprosy in the Old Testament, some of which, 
like that of Miriam, the sister of Moses, are only 
temporary and are curable. Naaman evidently suf- 
fered from a lighter non-contagious form of the disease 
or he would not have been permitted freely to mingle 
with his fellow-men. Elisha's command to dip seven 
times in Jordan may be understood to mean, according 
to Hebrew usage, to bathe repeatedly or frequently. 
In specifying the Jordan the prophet may also have 
indicated one of the healing, medicinal springs along 
its course. The powerful hope awakened in Naamaifs 

227 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

breast would doubtless facilitate his recovery. More- 
over, if Elisha could communicate the disease to 
Gehazi through the mind he might remove it from 
Naaman by the same means. So those who are im- 
pressed with the lifelike veracity of this narrative 
may be disposed to accept it without recourse to 
thaumaturgy, while those to whom miracles are accept- 
able will gladly welcome this miracle. 

Now let us proceed. Naaman was not like nine of the 
ten lepers who were healed by Jesus. When he saw 
that he was cured his heart was full of gratitude and he 
returned to the prophet's residence, a distance of thirty 
miles. His first act was the confession of the God by 
whose servant he had been healed. "And he returned 
to the man of God, he and all his company, and stood 
before him and said, Behold, now I know that there is 
no God in all the earth but in Israel." This is very 
interesting. Naaman was an early pragmatist. Elisha 
had entered into no argument with him. He had not 
tried to convince Naaman's reason of the truth of his 
religion. Naaman was still far from the conception of 
the one universal God whose power is over all the 
earth. Yet he is willing to deny his own gods and to 
worship Jehovah. Why? The answer is plain, it is as 
clear as day. He had received a great blessing through 
the religion of Jehovah, a blessing which he acknowl- 
edges by making Jehovah his God. People may argue 
as much as they please, but the fact stands. The 
practical motive in religion is a real and powerful 
motive. Men believe because it is good to believe. 

228 



THE HEALING OF NAAMAN 

The greater the good religion bestows upon men the 
more they believe in it, and the less good any form of 
faith does men the less faith it is able to inspire. 
Naaman had previously believed in the gods of his 
people and they had not helped him. While adoring 
them he was a leper. Now he was cured by the religion 
of Jehovah, and he accepted that religion. That was 
as far as his reasoning went and it is as far as most 
persons' reasoning goes. 

Naaman, in setting out for Samaria, had not come 
empty-handed. He had brought with him in gold, sil- 
ver, and raiment a small fortune, amounting in ancient 
currency to about fifty thousand dollars, but according 
to its present purchasing power probably worth ten times 
that sum. It is noticeable that Naaman made no allu- 
sion to this costly gift before he was cured. He did not 
offer it to the prophet as a fee or even as an incentive to 
do his best. He offered it as a gentleman would, as an 
expression of gratitude. "Now, therefore, I pray thee, 
take a blessing of thy servant." The question of re- 
ceiving payment for great personal services rendered 
to men has always been a mooted one. In Israel there 
was no prejudice against the payment of prophets for 
their services. When Saul asked the help of Samuel 
he came with the money in his hand. People also were 
in the habit of entertaining the prophets in chambers 
built for that purpose, and of sending them presents of 
the fruits of the earth very much as they do to-day. 
One feels that there are services which cannot be paid 
for by money. Yet in some way the worker must be 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

supported by his work in order that he may be free 
to do it. Socrates refused to accept a reward for his 
instruction, and Xantippe and her children suffered 
privations which did not improve Xantippe's temper or 
her respect for the philosopher's vocation. Paul de- 
clared that he would rather die than that any man 
should make his boasting void that he lived by his 
own labor; yet he declared that the laborer is worthy of 
his hire. The illustrious Dr. Howe felt himself pre- 
cluded from the practice of his profession by the fact 
that he could not bring himself to accept fees from his 
patients. Yet I believe that he accepted a salary from an 
institution. On the other hand, a sentiment of gratitude 
is natural to all right-minded persons, and the ingrati- 
tude which accepts all and gives nothing is one of the bit- 
terest experiences of those who are trying to help their 
fellow-men. Many persons are so situated that the 
only return they can make for benefits received is a gift 
of money. At all events, I may lay it down as a 
principle that persons who have been blessed and helped 
by an institution are under obligation to sustain and 
extend that institution, the more so if it does its work 
freely for God's sake and makes no other claim than a 
moral claim. Exactly why Elisha refused Naaman's 
gift we do not know. He declared that it was not a 
time to receive rich and costly presents. Perhaps it was 
a time of graft and corruption to which he wished to set 
an example of disinterested service. Perhaps he pre- 
ferred to have Naaman and the King of Syria see that 
the gift of God was without money and without price. 

230 






THE HEALING OF NAAMAN 

Naaman's offering was not intended for the service of 
God, nor that other men might be healed free of charge, 
nor to extend the work. It was a personal present to 
Elisha, a fortune which he declined to receive. "And 
he said, as the Lord liveth before whom I stand; I will 
not receive it. And he urged him, but he refused." 

But, unfortunately, Elisha had an assistant, a 
familiar spirit, a subtle and inventive person named 
Gehazi. Gehazi's master passion was covetousness. 
His eye sparkled with pleasure when he saw the long 
string of asses and camels with their fine trappings, 
bearing rich fabrics and little bags filled with gold and 
silver, drawn up before his master's door. And when 
he heard Elisha's refusal and saw the caravan carrying 
its precious cargo move away he could not conceal his 
annoyance. "Surely," said he, "my master hath 
spared Naaman, this Syrian, in not receiving from his 
hands that which he brought. But as the Lord liveth, 
I will run after him and take somewhat of him." 
So fast did Gehazi run that he soon overtook the camels 
hastening to their home. Naaman saw him pursuing 
and respectfully descended from his chariot and in- 
quired "Is all well?" As soon as Gehazi recovered 
his breath he poured into Naaman's ear a story which 
has served as a model for many others. Elisha has not 
changed his purpose. He, Gehazi, makes no demand 
for himself. But there are some poor clergymen for 
whom Elisha would like the modest sum of two thou- 
sand dollars and two suits of clothes. "My master has 
sent me, saying even now there be come unto me from 

£31 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

Mt. Ephraim two young men of the sons of the proph- 
ets. Give me, I pray thee, a talent of silver and two 
changes of raiment." The liberal Syrian, who prob- 
ably perfectly understood the transaction, assented and 
urged on him twice that amount of money and the 
desired raiment. 

On returning to the prophet's house Gehazi bestowed 
his treasures in a safe place and came and stood before 
his master as usual. But prophets ought to be served 
by honest people. Simple and unsophisticated as they 
are in the ways of the world, their eyes are terribly 
quick to behold falsehood and wrong. "And Elisha 
said, Whence comest thou, Gehazi?" And Gehazi 
made that famous answer which has been echoed in all 
ages by the Church: "Thy servant went no whither." 
"And he said, went not mine heart with thee? Is it a 
time to receive money and to receive garments, and 
olive yards and vineyards and sheep and oxen and men 
servants and maid servants? The leprosy, therefore, 
of Naaman shall cleave unto thee and thy seed forever. 
And he went out of his presence a leper as white as 
snow." Poor Gehazi! He was terribly punished for 
his wrong-doing. Perhaps Elisha judged him too 
harshly. After all, he was the servant. It was his 
business to see that the prophet was properly clad and 
that he enjoyed two meals a day long after the ravens 
had ceased to feed him, and perhaps Gehazi had in- 
tended to lay Naaman's present away in order that he 
might have the pleasure of bringing it forth before the 
prophet on a rainy day. 

232 



THE HEALING OF NAAMAN 

There are two other incidents that I must briefly 
allude to. When Elisha refused Naaman's gift, Naa- 
man replied by making a singular request: "Shall 
there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two 
mules' burden of earth, for thy servant will henceforth 
offer neither burnt - offerings nor sacrifice unto other 
gods, but unto the Lord." Why did Naaman wish to 
carry back with them these two mules' burdens of 
earth? Because he in common with the rest of the 
world believed that every country has its own god who 
in some way is attached to the soil of that country. 
By standing on Israelitish soil in Syria he hoped to be 
able to commune with Israel's God. 

Again, Naaman plainly foresees the difficulties and 
embarrassments which will attend his change of faith, 
especially in his relations with his royal master, and he 
asks the prophet's moral guidance in the deepest and 
most pathetic words of our chapter: "In this thing 
the Lord pardon thy servant that when my master 
goeth to the house of Rimmon to worship there, 
and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the 
house of Rimmon : the Lord pardon thy servant in this 
thing." Naaman was doing a most unusual thing, and 
he was beset by unusual difficulties. In antiquity 
people did not personally change their religion. They 
worshiped their country's gods, and he who did not do 
so was regarded as a public enemy. Men worshiped 
as their fathers worshiped, and every country had its 
own gods and temples. Hence for an individual to 
espouse a foreign faith and to set himself in opposition 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

to the religion of his people exposed him to grave dan- 
ger. Some degree of conformity was necessary if he 
would remain at home while worshiping a strange god, 
and Naaman promised himself inward allegiance to the 
faith he had adopted and only outward conformity 
to the religious customs and traditions of his people. 
With this Elisha seems to be satisfied and he said unto 
him, "Go in peace." I once heard Dr. Henry van 
Dyke, preaching on this subject, say, this was only 
a farewell salutation, "good -by, Naaman," i.e., the 
prophet's refusal to answer a question which Naaman 
must answer for himself. But the words, I think, mean 
more. They mean this. The Lord will pardon you for 
this thing. Go in peace ! Go back to your old life with 
your new faith, and do the best you can. 



VII 

THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 

And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received 
not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they 
without us should not be made perfect. — Hebrews xl: 39, 40. 

IN this wonderful chapter on faith the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews briefly records the lives of 
the greatest men and women of his nation. If we 
would know what faith is we must know what such 
men and women were. Two qualities, like shining 
threads, run through their histories. Two charac- 
teristics are common to them all. All were men of the 
future, all dissatisfied with the world as it is and en- 
gaged in a struggle against it. All had the vision of 
something higher, mightier, more satisfying yet to come, 
which they proclaimed with loud and joyful voices, 
a vision for which they lived and which separated 
them forever from men who are satisfied with them- 
selves and with things as they are. And these men of 
faith, believing in the future, created the future. By 
their discontent with the sordidness and injustice of 
life as it is they created a life more worthy of men and a 
humanity more worthy of living. That is the first note 
of their character; the second is that their insistence 

235 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

on the ideal brought them into conflict with the 
actual. Their condemnation of the world awoke the 
deepest animosity of the world and made their lives a 
tragic struggle followed in many instances by a more 
tragic death. The author of this Epistle, whom we 
know not, lived in the first century, and his purview 
extended only to the Jewish people. But had he lived 
in the twentieth century and had his wide glance in- 
cluded all the saints and heroes, the thinkers and dis- 
coverers of all time, his recital would not have been 
materially different. What was true of men of faith 
then has been true ever since. Their story has been 
about the same in all centuries. Now the world has 
regarded their great services with cruel indifference; 
now it has repaid their love with stakes and crosses, 
and the old signs of power have never been wanting. 
Homer, too, must wander like a beggar through the 
cities of Greece in his lifetime. Socrates must drink 
the hemlock; Joan of Arc must expire in the flames for 
the glory of having saved France; Galileo must recant 
and abjure his own discoveries; Raleigh must languish 
in prison; Columbus must return home in chains; 
Henry Hudson was cast adrift in an open boat, to 
perish in the vast sea that bears his name; Lincoln must 
fall by an assassin's bullet: they were all disappointed, 
and not one obtained the thing that he hoped for. 
Abraham received the promise of Canaan, the lot of 
his inheritance, but the only portion of the land which 
he possessed at his death was the burial-place which he 
had purchased from the children of Heth. Moses led 

236 



THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 

his people through the wilderness, but was not per- 
mitted to enter the promised land. Yet the strange 
thing about all these children of God is that they did 
not die in despair, but hoped on to the end. " These all 
died in faith, not having received the promises, but 
having seen them afar off and were persuaded of them, 
and embraced them, and confessed that they were 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth.'' They received 
not the promises. God had revealed to them a future 
of splendid usefulness, of reciprocated love, of brilliant 
fame; and apparently He had broken His promise. 
But they knew it not and trusted to the end. Their 
reward had been only hard labor, distrust, neglect, or 
scoffing, yet they did not find life evil and expressed no 
disgust of it. And by their lives they have conse- 
crated life, and their deeds have reared the temple of 
humanity. For whatever reason we have of loving life 
and of glorying in humanity we have chiefly received 
through them. This, then, I conceive to be the princi- 
ple of all life. It is based on illusion. It promises us 
many things that it cannot possibly perform. But to 
the faithful heart it is no deception and no mockery. 
It may deceive us in regard to the nature of our reward, 
but that is only because we have set our hope too low 
and are too impatient. 

The immediate reward of Jesus' life seems to be the 
whipping-post of Pilate and the nails of the Cross; but 
his reward has been flowing in for nineteen hundred 
years, and it will continue to flow. 

Life is an illusion. What else is this universe, which 

237 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

seems so solid, yet can be so readily dissolved by the 
thought of man? Apart from a seeing eye, a hearing 
ear, an understanding mind, what is it? Nothing that 
we can recognize. What is the vehicle that unites 
and brings to us all those sights, sounds, perfumes, 
contacts that are the creation of our senses? and 
without the co-operation of our senses what would re- 
main? We cannot imagine. To us the universe is an 
apparition, the cause of our sensations; but what it is 
in itself we shall probably never know. 

Life is an illusion because, while we constantly 
work for the future, we have no power to read the 
future. With us all, the least and the greatest, the 
future is a matter of faith, not of knowledge. We may 
believe in it, we may appeal to it, but we cannot tell 
whether it will bring forth the crowning or the destruc- 
tion of all our hopes. While we think we are working 
for one thing we usually discover that we are working 
for something else. At one time in my life I spent 
seven years in a fine library, with little to do but read, 
and I expected to become a scholar. I have never 
become a scholar, and I have forgotten nearly all that 
I used to know. But I have found employment for the 
knowledge I possess which I little anticipated, and had 
I been informed beforehand what my work in life was 
to be I could hardly have been better guided in my 
reading. The boy plays, as Robertson says, because he 
enjoys playing. But in his play he is training his 
muscles and his nervous system and disciplining his 
mind for the serious business of life. He studies to 

238 



THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 

satisfy his parents, to gain the approbation of his 
masters, to excel other boys: but these are not the 
real rewards of his efforts. They are of a totally 
different character, rewards which while he was a child 
would have been no incentive at all. A man toils all 
his life to accumulate a fortune. He succeeds, but his 
success is a very different thing from that which he 
expected. By the time what he used to regard as 
success is come he probably has no time and no power 
to enjoy it. As he looks back over his life with all 
its trials and anxieties and unending labors he realizes 
that what he calls his fortune is not his reward at all. 
That has come little by little in the work he has done, 
in the improvement of his faculties, in his increased 
power to do good to others, and in the love and satis- 
faction this has brought him, probably also in a few sim- 
ple pleasures which a poor man might have commanded 
just as easily. If he has had these rewards he is 
satisfied. If he has missed them his wealth is no 
compensation for them. When America was dis- 
covered it was not discovered by men who were looking 
for a new world. They were looking for a new passage 
to India and China, and the mighty continent that 
they brought to light seemed only to block their way. 
The early colonists of this country little dreamed of 
founding a great empire: they sought an opportunity 
to earn a bare livelihood. They came to escape 
political oppression and religious tyranny. Their 
utmost hope was to enjoy religious liberty and the 
privilege of supporting their families by hard work. 

239 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

And they all died without an intimation of what they 
had done, or of the new life for men which should 
spring from their humble beginnings. All illusion! In 
every case a reward quite different from that which 
they expected or sought. 

So, to cite the greatest of all examples, our Lord 
Jesus Christ believed that the Kingdom of Heaven was 
at hand. Neither he nor any of his followers seems to 
have realized the weary time that must elapse before 
the power of sin is broken, the divine denouement 
comes, and the will of God is done on earth as it is in 
Heaven. He said, in words which sparkle like dia- 
monds and which across the ages thrill with the in- 
tense emotion of his expectation, "There be some 
standing here which shall not taste of death until they 
shall see the Kingdom of Heaven come with power." 
He despatched his Disciples in haste to make the final 
announcement, commanding them to take no staff nor 
shoes for the journey, and to salute no man by the 
way. "Go not into the way of the Gentiles and into 
any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. Verily I 
say unto you, before ye shall have gone over the cities 
of Judah the Son of Man shall come." He volun- 
tarily laid down his life to usher in the Kingdom, and 
that Kingdom in the sense of the approach of the end 
of the world: and the visible appearance of Christ 
seems as remote as ever. Yet the Kingdom of God 
came, and it came through Christ's death. His only 
miscalculation was that he underestimated the stupen- 
dousness of the transaction and the time that it would 

240 



THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 

take to conclude it. Yet he candidly confessed his 
ignorance of the day and the hour. The task was 
greater than he at first believed. Instead of merely 
revealing to men the perfect life and waiting for God 
to create a perfect environment of that life from 
Heaven, it was God's will that He should make the en- 
vironment also by moral means and that that life 
should fulfil itself by slow growth. Instead of bring- 
ing the world to judgment and destruction God has 
laid upon him the greater task of renewing and trans- 
forming it. The first generations of Christians lived 
in daily expectation of the coming of Jesus. They 
greeted each other with the word "Maranatha" — the 
Lord is at hand. Without the mighty support of their 
expectation of immediate deliverance they could hardly 
have sustained their torments. If we would know 
what the early Christians thought on this subject we 
have only to read the marvelous and lurid pictures of 
Revelation. 

We no longer look for the coming of Jesus in this 
sense. We no longer look for it, for we perceive that 
he is already here, not as a destroyer, not as a mere 
judge, but in his pure and beneficent character, as the 
Helper, the Consoler, and the Purifier of men, the 
Rectifier of wrongs. Wherever men, touched by his 
spirit, feel and act as he felt and acted, he is among 
them. "Lo, I am with you always.' 5 "Where two or 
three are gathered together in my name, I am in the 
midst of them." 

So, from whatever point of view we look at it, there 

16 241 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

is a vast element of illusion in human life, an element 
that cannot be withdrawn without sapping the mightiest 
springs of our action, a world to which belong all art and 
poetry, and music, and works of imagination, which 
accomplish their effects almost wholly through illusion. 
There are men, it is true, almost without illusion who 
see life, or who think they see it, in its naked ugliness 
exactly as it is, but they are dry branches, eunuchs 
which are made eunuchs of men. They can neither 
change the world as it is nor persuade those who behold 
life under the veil of illusion to surrender one of their 
joys. Go to the lover and point out the illusions of 
love and you will not cause him to relinquish them. 
He lives in a fairer world, he sees things you cannot see. 
He hears voices that are ineffable, and even though at 
last he wake from his dream, or is robbed of it by the 
cruel hand of Death, yet he has had it. He goes 
through life a better man, a purer and gentler and 
deeper man by virtue of the unutterable mystery into 
which he was once permitted to gaze. 

After his death Jesus showed himself alive to his 
Disciples in the form of a few brief, impalpable visions 
— apparently how unimportant, how slight a thing on 
which to hang the future faith of mankind! x\nd yet it 
sufficed to change their lives, and it is one of the 
foundation-stones on which the faith of the world 
stands to-day more securely than ever before. 

And now we come to the last question: If life is so 
largely built on illusion, must it not inevitably end in 
disillusion? In one sense, yes. Seldom does old age 

242 



THE ILLUSIONS OF LIFE 

retain the illusions of youth; almost never do the 
rewards of life correspond with the promises. But 
there is a great difference between men in this matter. 
Those who have thought chiefly about themselves and 
their personal profit, and the advantages which should 
accrue from their efforts, are apt to suffer grievous 
disappointment. The reward comes not, or it comes 
too late, when they have neither the time nor the 
capacity to enjoy it; or it is taken away from them, 
or when they receive it they feel they do not want it. 
He who thinks most of what he can receive through 
love receives least. He who thinks of what he can 
give receives all. These are the disillusioned, the dis- 
appointed, the embittered, who pronounce life a failure, 
a fraud, a system of deception, and who die without 
faith. And there are others who have lived not for 
themselves chiefly, but for the vision they have seen, 
for the cause that was committed to them; the men of 
faith, who believe in the power of truth and that 
nothing good can ultimately perish. The reward fails, 
the bright dream is not realized, but that is only be- 
cause a holier, greater, better thing has come to them 
to which they are quite willing to surrender the less. 
Abraham found no continuing city, but he became the 
father of the faithful and he walked with God. Moses 
did not enter the promised land, but he delivered his 
people and led them to it. Jesus died on the Cross, 
yet he died knowing that he had given life to the world. 
To such, life contains no disillusions in the sense of 
disappointment and despair. The reward is greater 

243 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

and more satisfying than they had dared to hope — that 
is all. For, after all, the highest happiness this life can 
give us is the happiness of satisfying our own inward 
ideal, of loving, of r^ing to our highest, and of using our 
best in the service of men. Those who are permitted 
to do this never complain of life and never doubt its 
goodness. And when we speak of illusions in the lives 
of such men we only mean that they divine a higher and 
more satisfying world than that we see, a world invisible 
to us, which they make visible by their lives, and even 
though the actual performance seem to fail, and the 
reward to which they confidently looked forward is 
withheld, that is because they have undertaken a task 
too great for human power, a work too long for our 
short life, which they must resign to others to complete, 
"that they without us should not be made perfect. M 
And the reward which seems withheld is withheld 
because it is so great that it must follow them into 
eternity. So they hope on to the end, and die in faith, 
without receiving the promises. 

I have alluded to the beneficent illusions of life. 
But there is one illusion in regard to life which is dan- 
gerous. It is that life is long. On the contrary, it is 
very short, far too short for its opportunities. There- 
fore, let us make haste. "What thou doest, do 
quickly." 



VIII 

THE THREE JUDGMENT SEATS 

It is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful. But with me 
it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment; 
yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am 
I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore 
judge nothing before the time, when the Lord eometh who both will bring 
to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels 
of hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God. 

— I Cor. 4 — First five verses. 

ST. PAUL is here describing the three great tribunals 
which have jurisdiction over human life — self- 
judgment, the judgment of men, and the judgment of 
God. He himself seems to feel the judgment of God 
alone to be important. He had judged himself so 
often ; he had heard so many times the judgments and 
complaints of men that he preferred now to wait and see 
what God would judge of him. Happy is he who 
escapes self-condemnation. Happy is he whom the 
fear of God delivers from the fear of man. And yet 
while we acknowledge that God's judgments alone are 
adequate, and that God alone passes final judgments 
on all human conduct, we cannot afford to forget either 
the judgments of conscience or the judgments of men. 
That man can judge himself is the chief proof of his 
moral nature. If it were not for this faculty our lives 

245 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

would be far serener and less troubled than they are. 
But conscience neither rests itself nor lets us rest. It 
will not be happy nor let us be happy until there is 
peace and harmony within our soul — peace and har- 
mony between knowledge and faith, between thinking 
and doing, between yesterday and to-day, between 
time and eternity. It lays hold of the highest truth 
within its reach and compels us to live up to it or to 
suffer. It makes us uneasy and sorrowful until our 
life is in harmony with our knowledge. Nor does it 
hold up to us merely that which is beautiful, attractive, 
flattering to the soul. It compels us to recognize 
truths deeply humiliating to our pride. It commands 
us to do painful duties. It holds out no reward except 
peace with God and with ourselves. It addresses us 
with no cajoling arguments, but only with the short, 
solemn "You ought." Shall we not listen to its voice, 
and, if we do not, will God address us with any other 
voice? I know that men are differently constituted 
in this respect. There are natures loved by God 
which as soon as they perceive a truth embrace it and 
hold it fast forever. There are wills in such accord 
with conscience that they only have to recognize a 
duty to do it. But though such natures be rare, yet 
in a conscience man possesses something which lifts him 
out of the whole animal kingdom and which makes him 
a citizen of the eternal and spiritual world of God. 

But because each of us possesses such a nature the 
companionship of men and women makes us some- 
thing quite different from what we should be without 

246 



THE THREE JUDGMENT SEATS 

it. There is no more wonderful discovery in the world 
than the discovery of the soul of another person. We 
may have known that person for years in a superficial 
and conventional sense — known, that is, the mask that 
he or she presents to the world. Something occurs 
to remove the mask and we see the real man or woman, 
a totally different thing. We are admitted to the 
secret places of that life, and discover for what that 
heart beats. Life has taught me one thing — that men 
and women are not what they seem. They may be 
better or they may be worse, but they are always more 
interesting than they appear. There is no more 
steadying and sustaining knowledge than the knowl- 
edge of other spirits like ourselves, the knowledge of 
other souls struggling with our temptations, beset with 
our griefs, yet presenting a brave, untroubled front to 
the world. There are times when the journey is too 
great for us and the burdens of life are too heavy, when 
we find neither strength nor courage to battle for our- 
selves, but we can borrow strength from another and 
find in our love for him and his love for us a motive 
which is sufficient to sustain us. We are so closely 
bound up with others that we hardly know what to call 
our own. So humanity, having largely made us what 
we are, has a right to judge us. This world is a vast 
judgment hall where men and actions are forever 
weighed and measured and judgments are continually 
recorded. Look, for example, at the Stock Exchange. 
There is a place where the value of every man who lias 
a value is quoted, where nations are weighed, where 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

consciences are discounted, where governments are 
measured and God Himself is appraised and pews are 
auctioned. "Ten years ago," said Old Osborn, in 
Vanity Fair, "Sedley was a better man than I was, 
better I should say by ten thousand pounds." And 
the judgments of the world in the long run are seldom 
wrong. Their chief defect is that they are prejudiced 
and incomplete. A man who makes large demands 
of his fellows and who calls on others to believe, to 
think, and to do otherwise than they have been accus- 
tomed is never well received. People regard him as 
an enemy, and he is an enemy to their old life. Only 
time can do justice to him. Only after death or 
defeat has made him harmless to the living, or signal 
victory has stopped men's mouths, is he valued at his 
true worth. So every new truth which touches life 
must live through a period when it is hated before 
it attains the period when it is loved. But as soon as a 
man or an act is so far removed that the passions and 
self-interest of men are no longer threatened they begin 
to judge righteously. At the time of Jesus there was a 
young woman who seems to have been demented. 
What a simple fool Pilate would have considered the 
man who said that the name and influence of Mary 
Magdalene would outlive that of the Emperor Tiberius ! 
Yet such is the case. The further back we go the 
more the good and the wise stand out as the great, 
and the foolish and the vicious, the conventional and 
pompous disappear. Such are the judgments of the 
world. At best imperfect, because they are based 

248 



THE THREE JUDGMENT SEATS 

largely on ignorance and distorted by self-interest. 
At their worst, cold, pitiless, absurd, or, if this appears 
to be too strong, it will be admitted that the judg- 
ments of this world need two things to make them 
just — time and the absence of self-interest. 

What, then, should be our attitude toward these 
judgments? We ought to respect them as much as we 
can. The man who sets himself in the face of public 
opinion, who adopts strange, uncouth manners, who 
loves to express himself in startling paradoxes, and 
who makes himself quaint, peculiar, a thing apart, 
who out of a false spirit of independence loves to 
trample on decent custom, is surely a little man, for 
he spends his life in fighting about little things. That 
is why a gentleman is so satisfactory. We know where 
to find him. One day Diogenes, the old surly Cynic 
who asked Alexander the Great to step outside of his 
sunshine, was invited to dinner by Plato, and when 
he reached Plato's house he began industriously to wipe 
the mud from his sandals on Plato's rich carpets, saying 
as he did so, "Thus I trample on Plato's pride." 
"With even greater pride, Diogenes," said the wise 
Plato. And if we may not violate these conventional 
ideas which are morally indifferent, still less may we 
trample on those institutions and customs which have 
the higher sanctions of morality, which society establishes 
for its own protection. Many men and women have at- 
tempted to do this and to find their happiness in defiance 
of the esteem and approval of their fellow-men. Few 
have succeeded, and they have left dangerous examples. 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

On the other hand, can anything be more servile and 
degrading than accepting the world's judgments as our 
only standard? Better a thousand times gruff old 
Diogenes than the sleek sycophant. Look at the man 
who cannot brook the restraint of God or of conscience, 
but who trembles before the judgments of this world, 
whose only question in regard to any principle or 
measure is not, is it right or true, but, is it popular? 
Will it succeed? See his subservience to the world's 
fashions, his fear of its frown, his lack of independence, 
his conformity to its shallow code. "Horrible," said 
Lord Bacon, "to fear man and to be brave toward 
God." The Apostle is right. He who knows the 
world is not tempted to pay too much heed to its 
immediate judgments. People seem to frown on you 
to-day. Why? You do not know. Probably they do 
not know either. Very likely it is because they are in 
ill humor, or they may be jealous of your happiness. 
Anyway, it is not worth while to stop long to ponder 
over it. If you are conscious of offense, acknowledge it. 
If not, go your way; do your work and to-morrow 
they may smile. He whose happiness depends on the 
world's smile and who cannot do his work in the face 
of its frown had better lay down his tools at once, for 
he will never accomplish anything. "Woe to you," 
said Jesus Christ, "when all men speak well of you. 
So did their fathers of the false prophets." It is enough 
and more than enough if God gives us the love and ap- 
preciation of a few loyal hearts which only draw closer 
in the hour of our adversity and protect our breasts 

250 



THE THREE JUDGMENT SEATS 

with the triple shield of their love which the world's 
malice cannot pierce. "The victorious cause pleased 
the gods, the lost cause pleased Cato," was the highest 
praise which the Roman poet, Lucan, could bestow on 
the man who died by his own hand rather than witness 
the extinction of his country's liberties. 

There is a trace of this feeling in the heart of every 
one who lives for an ideal. Something of this contempt 
of the world, as Paulsen says, which is so strongly a 
marked feature of Christianity is experienced by every 
fine and noble soul. Men are not what our childish 
trust imagined them. Behind their beautiful mask 
which they know so well how to assume lurk the base 
impulses of a selfish soul. They pursue trivial ends 
and mean designs, and with the curse laid on all 
Lilliputian natures they ascribe the same motives to 
others. Serious and great thoughts only disgust them 
and a merciless judgment is pronounced on all who will 
not echo their conventional sayings. Discovering this, 
some men like Voltaire and Dean Swift rejoice in 
hurling the venom back into the world's face, in com- 
pelling the world to see its own littleness and baseness 
and in making it shudder at the mirror they hold up 
to it. Noble natures, however, like Jesus and St. Paul 
sorrowfully and indignantly turn away from the world's 
judgment and take their refuge in God, looking to Him 
and to their own conscience for approval and reward, 
yet without ceasing to labor mightily for the world's 
salvation. No great work has ever been done on this 
earth without a support that the world cannot give. 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

The heart cannot live without the consolation of some- 
thing of which it is sure. Let us beware, then, of a 
peace with the world which leaves us satisfied. What 
men approve to-day they may condemn to-morrow, 
but above all the clouds of passing opinion the eternal 
stars keep watch above us and the darker the night the 
more plainly we may see them. There are and there 
always have been two kinds of great men in the world. 
There are those who, like Julius Caesar, Napoleon, 
Balzac, and Bismarck, have known how to use this 
world. They have studied it in order to exploit it. 
They have organized its forces for victory, attempting 
colossal undertakings, but knowing that if they lived 
they would succeed. And there are also those "his- 
toric holy simpletons" like Elijah, John the Baptist, 
Judas of Galilee, and John Brown who stand alone, 
attempt the impossible, run their heads against stone 
walls, live tragically, and die as martyrs, apparently 
accomplishing nothing, and yet changing the world for- 
ever by virtue of what they were and by the power of 
an irresistible example. 

So the judgments of this world are not infallible. To 
the man who has some respect for human nature there 
are few more painful exhibitions of vanity and imbecil- 
ity than those sweeping, cutting judgments of men and 
women of whom the speaker probably knows nothing. 
What patient study, what sympathy and previous 
training are needed to judge a good book. And is a 
man's soul, with its secrets, its unknown sorrows and 
temptations, its beautiful hopes, its withering disap- 

252 



THE THREE JUDGMENT SEATS 

pointments, easier to read than a book where every- 
thing is put down in black and white? How many 
persons are there whom we feel to be competent to 
compose our biography or to judge of our life? And 
has God revealed the lives of other men to us in a 
vision? When I meet a man who can discern nobility 
in others I instinctively look for nobility in him. 
What are the criticisms and opinions which have 
helped us the most? Was it some scornful condem- 
nation that an officious friend brought to our atten- 
tion professing to think we should be glad to hear it? 
I hardly suppose so. "Let the righteous smite me 
friendly and reprove me, but let not his precious balm 
break my head." No greater proof of friendship can 
be given than a just and passionless rebuke, and yet 
even more helpful are those generous recognitions of 
excellence we dare not allow, but which help us to 
become what we would be. There is one person of 
whose judgments I am greatly afraid. That is the 
friend who loves and trusts me. 

St. Paul ends this saying with a very beautiful 
thought. He turns away from the judgment of men 
to the judgment of God, not only because God's judg- 
ment is juster but because it is kinder. Though God 
knows all, though he knows more evil of us than any 
human being knows, He does not think more evil of us 
than men think. Because He knows all He can pity 
all. If He knows our sins He knows also our weakness 
and our repentance, our desire for goodness, and many 
a secret, too, of love and kindness and hope, on which 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

He looks with approbation and love. "Who shall both 
bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will 
make manifest the counsels of hearts. 5 ' And then says 
St. Paul: "What is coining then? What will God's 
judgment be on the life He has laid bare to its inmost 
recesses, punishment, condemnation, annihilation?" 
"And then shall every man have praise of God." 
"Nothing but the Infinite Pity is sufficient for the in- 
finite pathos of human life." 



IX 



CHRIST AT THE DOOR OF THE HEART 

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. If any man hear my voice and 
open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 

— Revelation iii: 20. 

I SUPPOSE all readers of the Bible must have been 
struck with the strangeness of these words in this 
place. Among the threats and obscure warnings John 
is addressing to the Seven Churches, some of which 
seem to us far enough removed from the sanity and 
sweetness of Jesus, we suddenly come to this verse 
and find in it something familiar and dear. It is like 
one ray of friendly sunshine lighting up a dark and 
stormy scene, or it is like the sight of our own dear 
flag in a foreign land. We feel at once instinctively 
that Jesus probably uttered these words. This little 
parable bears the stamp of his genius. No one else 
could have said so much in so little and have said it so 
well. This may have been one of those sayings which 
escaped the Evangelists, but which the author of this 
book remembered for forty years and recorded here. 
Amid the strange and brilliant masses of precious 
metals and dross heaped up in the Book of Revelation 
we seem to recognize this gem cut by the hand of Jesus 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

Christ as we should recognize a statue by Praxiteles 
or a painting of Rafael's among the works of copyists. 
Simple as these words are, how many hymns and 
paintings and religious thoughts have they not in- 
spired! among others, Holman Hunt's "Light of the 
World" and "0! Jesu, Thou art standing." 

The first thing which offers itself to our attention is 
the deep, personal love Jesus tells us, not only here, but 
in countless other places, he felt for men. To most 
other great thinkers it was enough to have loved the 
truth; to Jesus, that was not enough. In all his pro- 
found searchings he carried humanity in his heart. 
Truth had little attraction for him that he could not 
communicate to all mankind and that would not make 
men permanently better. How plainly this appears 
in all Christ's utterances, in the oft-repeated "Where- 
unto shall I liken the Kingdom of God?" Subtle, dif- 
ficult, far-fetched questions which interest some minds 
but do not affect others were not for him. He dealt 
with those grand and simple themes which concern all 
men equally at all times. Knowledge fluctuates, man- 
ners change, generation follows generation. God and 
our relation to God, birth, death, sorrow, the in- 
completeness of human life, sin and the longing for 
forgiveness remain the same. So the religion of Jesus 
does not grow old. Sometimes in moments of deep 
dejection the world despairs of the ideal of Jesus and 
rejects it bodily. Sometimes, elated by success, carried 
away by its own splendid progress, the world feels that 
it has outgrown Christianity and spurns it. Yet the 

256 



CHRIST AT THE DOOR OF THE HEART 

ideals of Jesus heal its wounds and give it strength for 
new efforts. The Christianity the world has outgrown 
is a Christianity Christ had already outgrown, rather, 
it is a garment that never fitted him. No sooner does 
the world dispose of the claims of Christ than Christ 
presents a new claim of which the world as yet had not 
reckoned, and the disposing of the several claims of 
Jesus Christ constitutes the moral education of hu- 
manity. So Christ stands and knocks at the great 
house of human life, and as door after door yields to 
him, God dwells more and more with man, and man 
becomes more and more divine. 

Yet these words were spoken by Christ of his re- 
ception by individual souls, of his relation to you and 
me. It is certainly on account of the vastness of his 
soul that Jesus is able to confront us all, to knock at 
all our doors, and it is the vastness of his love that 
makes him wish to gain us all. These two things are 
very different. If Jesus had merely possessed his 
transcendent greatness with but little love for the 
human race he would have a claim on us, he would 
have a great claim on us. We should be forced to 
measure ourselves against him. His life would be our 
despair, and yet it would incite many of us to pitch 
our lives high. But the love of Jesus establishes a very 
different claim on us from mere admiration of his 
greatness. It is a bond altogether personal that unites 
our soul to the soul of the Redeemer. Jesus loves us, 
he knows us, he dwells with us. That is a very different 
thing. Let me give you an example, Emerson's old 

257 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

example. Some great man or woman comes to town, 
and we are invited to meet them. The hour, the 
place, the company are arranged to produce the effect. 
The great man speaks on the subject that makes his 
greatness, the brilliant woman utters a few brilliant 
things prepared for the occasion, or which, perhaps, 
she has said before. Anyway, they do not touch us 
much. We go home chilled and saddened by the 
impossibility of one human soul communicating itself 
to another. But then at home, without any effort or 
preparation, a friend, a sister, or a child comes to us 
sweetly and familiarly, takes us by the hand, and 
stirs the depths of our heart. " While we are musing, the 
fire burns, and at last we speak with our lips." It is 
this relation and not the first that Jesus w T ishes to 
occupy. 

In this great city thousands of people pass our door 
every day, but we pay no attention to them. They 
are nothing to us and we are nothing to them. We do 
not dream of detaining them as they hurry past our 
door bent on their own business. It is different with 
those who stand before the door and ask for admission. 
They have some claim on our attention which we must 
recognize, if only to get rid of them. But among these 
how many come only to weary us or to ask favors of us, 
or because society demands that they should occa- 
sionally drop into our parlors and say a few soft noth- 
ings, and depart thinking that they have done their 
duty by us for at least a year. And yet even this poor 
"calling," which has become one of the dismalest 

258 



CHRIST AT THE DOOR OF THE HEART 

farces that we play on one another, is the shadow of a 
great reality. It is the relic of the sacred tie of hospi- 
tality, that people seek us because they love us, and 
that those whom we admit into our homes we admit 
into our hearts. But how different it is when a friend 
comes to us who really wishes us, who comes for what 
we alone can give him, or to communicate himself to us. 
How quickly the barriers are taken down, how gladly 
we abandon our shams, our solemn airs and pompous 
manners! What a blessing it is to be simple and easy 
and natural, to give something and to receive some- 
thing! How we treasure such visits as among the real 
blessings of life! And after death or distance has 
parted us how sadly we look out of the window for the 
friend who stands before our door and knocks no more ! 
It is thus that Jesus comes. He comes to us because 
he wants to know us and because he wishes us to know 
him. He is not like men who, after they have knocked 
once or twice and are not admitted, go away in a rage. 
He stands sometimes for years, kingly in his humility, 
not minding the shame because he thinks not of him- 
self but of us. If he thought of himself he would not 
come at all, or if he came and knocked once and was not 
admitted he would never knock again. He knocks in 
joy, asking to be permitted to come in and bless our 
joy. He knocks in sorrow, desiring to enter and to 
share our sorrow with us. He knocks with a pierced 
hand, that we may know that he who knocks has borne 
sorrows heavier than ours. We do not admit him. We 
will not let him come in. But we know he is there; 

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RELIGION AND LIFE 

we have to pass him every time we go out or come in. 
Sometimes his mild eye falls on us, we realize who he is, 
and what he might be to us, and it troubles us. So we 
insult him, we try to drive him away, we congratulate 
ourselves that he is gone forever. But then amid 
scenes of senseless revelry, begun, perhaps, for the very 
purpose of banishing him and thought, in the silence 
of the night, in the solitude of our heart, we hear 
again that sound, not loud, not threatening, but sad 
and patient and full of memories; and though it re- 
proaches us it has a familiar and friendly sound, and 
many an evil thing does not enter our house, and many 
a good thing goes out of it, simply because Jesus 
stands before the door and sees what comes in and what 
goes out. 

Yet do not imagine for an instant that Jesus stands 
before your door like a poor lachrymose mendicant who 
has nowhere else to go. He stands there patiently, I 
know; he stands there humbly. Why, do you suppose, 
does he stand there at all? Many beings less than him- 
self, forces, if we may believe the Scriptures, that obey 
his will, come and go as they please, without troubling 
themselves to knock at all, and, hateful as they are 
to you, you cannot exclude them. Jesus you can 
exclude easily. You lock your door against care, and 
care flies through the window. You hide yourself 
from him in your most secret place, and he sits on your 
breast, and lays his head beside you on the pillow, 
tormenting you all night long with one foreboding 
grief after another. You barricade your house against 

260 



CHRIST AT THE DOOR OF THE HEART 

sickness and death. You summon your allies to your 
aid, all the resources of wealth, science, devotion in- 
carnate wearing the dress of a trained nurse. Death 
mocks at you. He dwells in the air you breathe, in the 
water you drink, in the food you eat. Poor Brother, 
you cannot exclude him. But though Jesus Christ 
holds in his hands the keys of death and of hell he will 
not place that key in your lock nor turn the handle of 
your door. That is his pride. He respects himself too 
much for that, and he respects you too much. He 
cares nothing for your house, with all its curiosities, its 
singular treasures, your luxury that begins on the kerb- 
stone. They are nothing to him. He would come to 
you just as willingly in a stable, like the one in which 
he was born, for he seeks not yours, but you. But 
though the storms of life, nay, though God Himself, 
smote that barrier into fragments, though your mother, 
wife, and children stood there weeping and supplicating 
Jesus Christ to enter in and save you against your will 
he would refuse to violate the sanctity of your soul. 
Never will his foot cross the threshold of your indi- 
vidual life till you yourself invite him to enter. "No 
man can deliver his brother from death, nor make 
agreement unto God for him. For it costs more to 
redeem their souls, so that he must let that alone for- 
ever." "If any man hear my voice and open the door, 
I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he 
with me." 

That is the last thought I shall try to bring out of 
this wonderful parable. Sin enters our house and 

2G1 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

defiles it. Care enters the door, and happiness flies 
out of the window. Death enters, and at his touch the 
sanctuary of our life is converted into four bare walls. 
Jesus enters to share with us our life, whatever it is, 
to repair what can be repaired, to bear with us what 
must be borne. He who sups with Jesus Christ sups 
well, though Christ and he now sit alone in silence 
in the room that a few days ago rang with the happy 
laughter of voices that are stilled forever. He who 
sups with Christ sups temperately, purely, happily. 
Christ has come in to share your life, to make it re- 
ligious, and sweet, and beautiful. But that is not all: 
Christ also invites you to share his life. The first 
thing he asks of you is a gift, food to strengthen him 
that he may do more work. I think it is precisely 
because most Christians do not understand this that 
so many Christian lives fail to develop. They begin 
well; they do not keep Christ waiting long, they ad- 
mit him almost as soon as he knocks. But that is the 
end. They have no gift for him; they do not bring 
forth the substance of their house to feed and strengthen 
him. They think they can keep Christ in their souls 
starved and idle. But Christ will not remain in our 
souls starved and idle. He has a work to do, and if we 
will not do it with him, he will do it without us. 
Christ did not come to us to offer us a selfish life of 
ease, but to invite us to take part with him in his 
great work of redemption. 

When I see men and women who have lost their love 
for Jesus, and who smile at the innocent enthusiasm of 

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CHRIST AT THE DOOR OF THE HEART 

those who love him to foolishness, who think in their 
hearts that his redemption cannot redeem, and that 
we must look for another, I know without asking that 
they are men and women who are doing nothing for 
Christ, and are giving nothing to Christ, and that if he 
depended on them for his meat he must indeed starve, 
and if the success of his work rested with them it 
would come to nothing, as they suppose. And, on the 
other hand, it is precisely those who work for Jesus, 
who sacrifice on his altar, night by night, some petty 
passion, selfishness, and care, who offer to him every 
morning the homage of a glad and willing mind, to 
whom Jesus is a reality. Do they not sup with him? 
Do they not feed him and give him new strength? 
Strange as it may seem to you, Christ literally needs 
such food as we can give him. He must eat and 
drink in order to live and to grow, although, of course, 
his food is purely spiritual. Every new soul into 
which Jesus enters makes him greater precisely by the 
worth of that soul. Every new truth that is dis- 
covered adds luster to his truth. If not a heart upon 
this earth beat in response to the heart of Jesus Christ, 
he w T ould disappear as if he had never existed. As far 
as this world is concerned he would indeed be dead. 
But that will never happen. For there are millions of 
hearts that beat in response to his heart, millions of 
lives consecrated to his ideal, millions of men who 
endeavor to time their feeble human steps to his 
gigantic march. This is the best gift Christ can 
bestow on us, the opportunity to share his work of the 

263 



RELIGION AND LIFE 

redemption of mankind, and here is the work lying 
before us, and Christ within us to do it with us. Here 
is a vineyard in which no honest day's labor was ever 
lost, and in which not one laborer who has worked was 
ever cheated of his wages. Cease, then, to worry and 
to fret about yourself and to wonder if your soul is 
saved. To believe, myself, that is a simple matter; 
but to believe so as to make others believe — there is 
always something great in that. To be saved myself, 
that is a little thing. To save others, to make Christ 
believed in the world, to shed abroad his light and to 
annihilate the darkness, to show men how beautiful he 
is, and to make them love him — that is what I desire. 
And, Master, in spite of my unworthiness, let me do this 
for thee to the end. 



THE END 



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